Thanksgiving

At Thanksgiving time, John and Char came to visit.  Jeff and Benjamin took them on a field trip while the kids were in school and I worked on things at home.  I had been sick, which did change my plans, but I got well in time for Thanksgiving.

Here he is giving them an education about Cuties - possibly his favorite food.

The actual day was pretty quiet, but we enjoyed it.  John and Char came over, and my mom and Don came over, and I only did a small part of the meal (yay!)  I tried to get some good pictures of the kids, and they looked good until I reviewed them later and realized I had the flash turned off.  So, I just missed a lot of cute moments…but still got some good ones.  At this stage, the trick to getting good smiles with my kids is letting each of them take turns choosing a location, putting the choosing kid in the middle, and having the others (gently) hug the kid in the middle.  Sounds weird, but it's working for now.

With the boys' birthdays and Christmas just around the corner, John and Char gave the boys their birthday gifts and gave the kids their Christmas gifts.  I thought it was nice that they could see the happy faces in person.  Benjamin got this basketball hoop for his birthday, which he loved, as you can see.  It took all the adults struggling to assemble it in the living room before they listened to Jonathan, Mr. Spatial Thinker, tell them how to do it.  He was right.  I should have taken a picture!

As is our tradition, we put up our tree (and by put up, I mean stand it up and plug it in) the day after Thanksgiving.  We normally decorate it at our own pace over the next couple of days.  This time, though, Jeff put it up and found that some of the branches didn't light up.  My organized husband had the original (seven-year-old) receipt from Costco, so he decided to take it in in case they'd take it back.  They DID!  He brought home a replacement tree, put it up, and…a couple of its branches also didn't work.  So, he returned that tree, brought home tree number, three, and…it worked.  Kudos to Jeff for persevering long enough to get us a fully functional tree!

And, here are the kids hanging candy canes.  I let Jonathan help with the real ornaments, but I let the younger two be in charge of hanging candy canes until they're a bit older.

As I mentioned, the kids got to enjoy some Christmas gifts early.  Here they are…super excited!

The younger kids got tubs of Lego bricks, and I love how Legos forces my kids to play together.  Yes, I did put sheets under them when they dumped out the Legos.  Our downstairs rugs, which came with the house, eat and hide Legos.  Only bare feet and vacuum cleaners can find them!

Here's me, hanging ornaments.  Is there any picture of me that does not include wet hair?

We played a whole-family game of Sorry!, and you can see that the kids lost interest while the grownups finished.

It really was a nice Thanksgiving.  I love how relaxing that break from school is.  We have so much to be thankful for, and I love the Christmas season that follows!