Thanksgiving break

 

Thanksgiving break: Always a welcome treat to have time off from school, and extra time to spend with family. It seemed extra relaxing this year. Not sure why. Maybe since last year at this time we spent a good deal of Thanksgiving break in the hospital with Pat's mom and her back surgery.

 

We always seem to have somewhere to run off to Thanksgiving morning, but not this year. Instead I got to introduce the kids to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. They both enjoyed it. At one point Henry was gazing at the TV and said, "Oh, pretty ladies!" Of course I hollered for Olivia to come watch when the Rockettes were on. She was in awe.

Then we were off to Tom and Kari's for our first Thanksgiving meal. Kari is such a great cook and prepared a lovely meal. I provided a chocolate cake (per Pat's request in celebrating his birthday.) After eating we had laughs watching family members take a shot at Guitar Hero. Henry loved hanging out with Sam's guinnea pigs. Friday we had Thanksgiving with the Stichas. Again, such amazing food! I made a cheesecake that everyone loved. We hung around all afternoon and into the evening just being lazy and eating the leftovers. I love those kinds of days.

Since the days at our home are coming to a close, I requested a quick outdoor photo shoot. I've wanted to do one at our place in the winter for the longest time. While they aren't quite what I envisioned, at least we got some in on a beautiful day.

We also took advantage of the beautiful weather to cut down our tree. Okay, so this is totally fake. A few years ago we got an artificial tree from Pat's parents who no longer wanted theirs. There are some parts of having a fake tree that I like, but honestly I really miss having a real one. Especially the tradition of going out to pick one out and cut it. Pat suggested we take our fake tree out and pretend to cut it down... posting the pictures to Facebook to see who would notice. Oh, that goof. So we did it, and as we were it seemed more ridiculous by the second. Olivia giggled and Henry looked so confused.

Still, we enjoyed the warmth; throwing snowballs for Tucker to catch and building a snow-woman. I went in to get accessories, and came out to see the snowman was definitely a WOMAN, with breasts.

Finally, we decorated our house for the last time for Christmas. We will be closing on our house a few days after Christmas. We were glad the date gave us one more chance to celebrate Christmas in the house.

A time of thanks for our family indeed.