Travelog for: Pebbels

Happy Halloween! I helped to celebrate Halloween with our neighbors - look at the cool jack-o-lanterns that the kids next door carved!

What an exciting week here in the United States! Tuesday was election day! I've been following the race while I've been here in the U.S., so I was excited to get to go and vote! Mara and her husband went to vote in the morning - it was rainy, but there was great turnout (there was a line inside the school). We couldn't take pictures too close (or inside), but here we are before we went in!

After I voted, they gave me a sticker to show off!

Because this was such an important election, a lot of businesses had promotions if you came in with your "I voted" sticker. So after we voted, we went to Starbucks for our free cup of coffee!

This also made Mara happy, since Starbucks is her favorite, and Starbucks has switched to their red holiday cups! That night, we went to her parents' house to watch the election returns. Here I am listening to Brian Williams (one of the NBC anchors) tell us about some of the states:

And at 11 pm, they announced that Barack Obama had won the election! We were so excited! Mara let us stay up late with her to watch his speech! And the next morning we all read about the historic election in the paper!

I'm so glad that I was here to be a part of it!

Hello! Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, so we're getting ready tonight. Mara goes to her cousin's house, and makes chocolate cookies (with TONS of powdered sugar!) every year to bring. Since she made 12 dozen, I helped with the baking! Here I am helping to roll the balls of chocolate dough in the powdered sugar...

And here I am with some of the cookies I baked!

I am excited for tomorrow - I'm sure it will be a lot of fun!

Happy Thanksgiving! It is Thanksgiving here in the United States - my first Thanksgiving ever! The day started with us watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It's a huge tradition here - everyone watches it! I liked all of the big balloons - it was a lot of fun!


Then we went to Maryland to Mara's cousin's house for Thanksgiving dinner! We celebrated with lots of family and friends - here we are at the table before everyone sat down!

Americans eat turkey and LOTS of side dishes for Thanksgiving - here I am eating turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and asparagus - now I see why Mara says that Thanksgiving is her favorite holiday!

After awhile, we had desserts - Plaid Moose and I checked them out beforehand...here we are with the cookies we helped to make!

And look at how yummy these apple pies look!

And the desserts tasted just as good as they looked!!

What a great day! I am so thankful that I got to spend it with Mara's family!

After all the fun of Thanksgiving yesterday, today I got to experience another American tradition - Black Friday. Black Friday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. Stores have HUGE sales and people try to get their holiday shopping done. Some of the malls opened at midnight, and most of the stores were open by 5 am for the early crowds! We didn't go quite so early, but we did go to a few places! Here we are in the car...

The area of Fairfax where we were shopping is called Fair Lakes, and has tons and tons of stores. There was also a funky sculpture of a girl with her dog that Plaid Moose and I saw from the car

Here I am in front of Michael's (a big craft store):

And here I am at one of the other sections of the strip mall!

Everyone here is getting ready for Christmas. All of the stores are decorated, and there is Christmas music playing everywhere you go! This week I went to the mall with Mara. The decorations were really beautiful. The first one is a little dark (it was hard to take a picture where you could see me and the decorations!), but can you find Santa in the second picture? He's taking pictures with kids in the mall!!

Even though it was a rainy day, I hopped in Mara's purse today with Plaid Moose and headed in to Washington DC with her! She was meeting a friend for lunch at Union Station - a huge train station that also has tons of fancy shops and restaurants! Here I am outside...



And look at the beautiful view of the Capitol Building!

Inside was all decorated for the holidays, including a huge tree and a cool model train! What a fun trip!

I have had a wonderful trip to the United States, but it's time to head home. First, I said goodbye to Plaid Moose and my new rabbit friends...

And then I hopped on a first class flight to Sweden. The post office lady said my light should take 5-9 days, so I should be home in time for New Years!

At the moment I'm back home. I've had a wonderful time! Thank you all who has let me come into their homes and showed me around their hometown! I loved it all!!