Thanksgiving Highlights.

We returned home today from a wonderful Thanksgiving tour of families. We started out Tuesday night with a drive up to the snowy North country to my parents'. The kids were both thrilled when we drove through the country roads to see them drifted over with more than a foot of white fluffy snow. We arrived to Grandpa and Grandma and all the wonderful sights of Thanksgiving--berry wreath on the door, pies cooling on the counter, basketfuls of gourds decorating the table. Wednesday was a day of relaxation, as the most productive thing we did all was make this family of snow men, each to match our personalities. We had a blast outside building these snowmen, throwing snowballs, and running around like kids! I think this may be our Christmas card photo this year:

One of the things I love about going to my childhood home for the holidays is waking up to the yummy smells of turkey and all the fixings wafting up the stairs on Thanksgiving morning. Once again, we were blessed with an abundant variety of wonderful food for a delightful meal--turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, squash, corn, brussel sprouts, salads, cranberries, green bean casserole rolls, and sparkling grape juice....all topped off with pumpkin pie, pecan pie, my Harvest candy swirl cheesecake, and ice cream. It was a blessed time of abundance of food and family time. I was thrilled that both of my grandmothers could be there, along with my grandfather, as well as my sister, brother, sister-in-law, and sweet little niece who was in sweet form in her little white dress and curly barely-there piggytails.
The day was filled with the kids making their Christmas list, watching the Macy's parade, resting, playing Racko, watching Samantha dance, and just sharing laughter with loved ones. I am all too aware that my grandmothers are aging quickly, and declining physically, so it was especially wonderful to share the day with them.

After dinner, we drove one hour to Matt's parents, where we played more games and enjoyed time with our family there. After everyone left, the kids and I watched the Charlie Brown Pilgrim special, which made for a great opportunity to teach the kids about these early settlers, their struggles, and their faith and hope.

Today, while we did not do the crazy 4:00 shopping thing, we did venture to a few stores to pick up some pajamas for the kids for Christmas Eve. We are really trying to simplify and avoid the crazy consumerism of Christmas. Matt and I then enjoyed breakfast out--just the two of us--and watched a couple of high school state final football games before driving home. We arrived home to a refrigerator full of hot, spoiled food....GROSS! Apparently, one of the alphabet letter magnets had prevented the refrigerator door from closing before we left, so it was open for the past 4 days. The really bad news is that I had just gotten groceries before we left, so over 100.00 of groceries were ruined. On the other hand, the good news is that the refrigerator was really hot and we probably easily could have had a fire, so we feel blessed that it wasn't worse. The lesson....watch out for those refrigerator magnets!!

Well, I am headed off to Michael's to take advantage of a few bargains. Kennedy is starting to paint a paint-your-own nativity set that we found at K-Mart, so that will be a month-long project that will be fun for the kids to create. The rest of the weekend will bring lots of home time, cleaning the carpets tomorrow, taking the kids to see "Bolt", watching football, and hopefully not a lot else! Enjoy!