Thanksgiving

Okay...prepare to be shocked...are you ready?
 I...
...have...
...absolutely no pictures to post from thanksgiving!

 None...well, except for a family shoot on my photo blog, but absolutely nothing for this one. I don't really know what to do with myself actually. Still, I couldn't just let Thanksgiving pass by without a word, because that just seems almost sacreligious for some reason. We have so much to be thankful for, and we had such a relaxing, fun Thanksgiving, that I have to share a word or two...or maybe a even a few more.

On Monday evening we had a special family-home-evening with some friends of ours and made a "Thankful Turkey". Everyone wrote one thing they were thankful for on a turkey feather and then we took turns guessing who wrote what and pinned it on the turkey. Afterwards, we had a lot of pie (something I baked a few times last week...we LOVE our pie around here!) and let the kids run wild upstairs.

The boys only had school last Monday and Tuesday, and even Tuesday was cut short due to a severe weather warning that ended up being nothing more than a rain storm; and so I dropped everyone off (Owen included), and came back home to hang with Ellie while the kids (except Owen who was in preschool) spent their morning in the cafeteria, eating lunch, after which they were released and bused back home to me by eleven thirty. The morning was quiet and lovely with Ellie and totally worth dragging everyone out of bed at six-thirty am.

The rest of the week was spent at home, enjoying a lot of family time, baking, eating, cleaning, getting sick, getting better, and preparing for the dreadful Monday morning where we had to return to real life again.  For Thanksgiving, we ate at our good friends home with some other families from our church. We missed our own families, but it was still a lot of fun being with them.

Dan and I avoided Black Friday like we avoided that crazy Teletubbies show when our kids were babies. We don't like crowds really, so the little shopping we did do, was online. The day after Thanksgiving was spent deep cleaning our house; because, for some reason I just can not put up Christmas decorations when the house is a mess. It has to be sparkly clean to deserve them. I do this every year...clean, clean, clean the house, pull out the decorations and the tree (we're a fake tree family, so that comes out too), get garland and fake pine needles all over the carpet, decorate the place up, and then pull out the vaccum and clean, clean, clean again.  Does this make sense to anyone else, cause to me it seems very...repetative? superfulous? redundent? rediculous? what's the word I'm looking for here? Hmm.... it will come to me...just give me a sec.

Anyway, this week so far has been filled with Christmas preparations. We are almost done with all of our shopping (woo-hoo!) and I still need to get a few online photo things together before I get to relax and enjoy the season. I am determined to keep things simple, spiritual, fun and very "Christmasy" this year without worrying about all the things I am not doing. Thanksgiving was so relaxing, I just want to have that again! The kids have been writing lists to santa non-stop for almost a week now, and I think it's pretty clear that Owen wants a DS and a pirate ship, Logan wants a Geonotion thingy (Starwars, I'm coutning on Dan for that one), Linc wants an art set and a Camera and a stuffed puppy, and Ellie wants "White Teddy" which will be coming with Abuela and Abuelo when they get here since we left him at their house by accident in June. I don't think O will be getting that DS...but oh the pirate ship we have planned is fantastic. I think Dan will be more excited than the boy.

Okay, well, I guess I'll stop rambling now, and to those of you who actually made it this far, congrats! I am impressed. K really....wait, hold on...I think I've got it...

...counter-productive! cleaning once, just to turn around and have to clean again is rather counter-productive, don't you think? I knew I'd get it!

Have a great week everyone!