Thanksgiving Wrap-Up

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday weekend with family. I spent the majority of the day cleaning on Wednesday to get ready for everyone to come over. Both my family and Jeff's family always get together. We ended up with 18 people here at our house for Thanksgving dinner and had more food than you can imagaine. The nice thing is everyone contributes so nobody has to do all of the cooking. We had turkey, ham, 2 kinds of dressing, noodles, mashed potatoes, corn, broccoli casserole, green bean casserole, several kinds of salads, 2 kinds of homeade rolls, pumpkin pie, a pumpkin roll, ambrosia cake, and two kinds of pudding desserts. In fact, my refrigerator is still full of leftovers. After stuffing ourselves with all of the good food we started playing games. I ended up at the table with the Mexican Train Domino game. Jeff didn't have as much fun as everyone else. On Monday and Wednesday he had dental work done that didn't go as well as planned. Between pain pills every few hours he spent the majority of the day sleeping. He was thankful for the soft mashed potatoes and noodles. I lost track of how many bowls he ate.

On Friday morning Jeff drove with my dad and grandpa to Emporia to pick up Miles. While they were gone my sister came over to hang out and with her help I got all of my fall decorations put away and almost all of my Christmas decorations put out.

Jeff and I started a tradition on our first Christmas together, which was 12 years ago, to buy a Santa. There's not any certain brand that we buy, we just look for one that we like that is unique and we use them to decorate our mantel. I have written the year on the bottom of each one and by the looks of this picture I think we will need to find a new place to put them next year. The little built in nook above our fireplace is getting pretty full.














For Grant's first Christmas Jeff's mom bought him an adorable snowman from Hallmark that played music. He absolutely loved for her to turn it on and rock him to sleep. She lost her battle with ovarian cancer the following year, but wrapped in a closet we found another snowman for Grant from the same series that she had bought to give him for his 2nd Christmas. Hallmark quit making this snoman collection the following year but I decided to continue on with the tradition. Each year I buy Grant a new snowman and mark it with the year. When he is old enough to have his own house and family I will pass them all on to him. In the meantime we get to enjoy them. This year I bought him the one on the bottom shelf at the back on the right hand side with the green scarf.




















On Saturday my sister came over again to take a family picture of us for our Christmas Card. I think Jeff spent more time with the camera in his hands. Here is one of the pictures he took on the front porch with me and the boys. It was super cold and windy so we had trouble finding a spot where my hair wasn't blowing in every direction. This is kind of a deceiving picture because Miles is actually taller than me. I'm just standing on a step that's a few inches higher than where he is.