Thanksgiving...

We celebrated Thanksgiving this year very differently than we ever have before. We decided to stay home (which wasn't a first), and had our "Thanksgiving Feast" with a group of other small families at our church on Wednesday...that ended up being quite the feast, and felt just like the real thing...who cares what day of the week you celebrate it anyway! Everyone brought something and we had TONS leftover. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pomegranate salad, rolls, green bean casserole, toss salad, pie, pie, pie, and more pie, etc.

Then on Thursday, the real Thanksgiving, we

1. had a fun breakfast of cinnamon rolls, scrambled eggs (with ham, cheese and green onions), hash browns, orange juice and hot chocolate,

2. watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade,

3. decorated for Christmas (set up the tree, and EVERYTHING else in the Christmas decoration boxes

and...

4. went to see Disney's Tangled.

I thought this movie was AWESOME! Mostly because Rapunzel was AwEsOmE. Her character reminded me a little of Belle...she could take care of herself, lots of spunk, despite her appearing to be quite petite...my kind of girl! :) Anyway, it's a good one! Seriously.

And now that Thanksgiving is over, it's officially "Christmas Time"...(even though the Christmas CDs have been playing for quite some time and Santa and the manger scene have been the most common topics of conversation in our house since Halloween). So, we painted ornaments,


Here are the pictures I took of the kids to put inside their ornaments.



(You'd never know that that seriously took FOREVER! And there were even a few tears shed over having to sit in front of the Christmas tree for 2 seconds while I snapped a shot to throw in those little trees! Unless I document it. So there. Now it's down in black and white.)

and we even had time to write Santa and take our letters to the special mail box in Macy's! Jemma wrote hers all by herself this year...I ought to put a picture of it in here...we made a copy of the original...cuz it is DARN cute!



This last picture has absolutely nothing to do with the last week, but it's tradition. I stood in my dad's hand, Jemma stood in Brandon's hand, and Carter did the same. So here it is, Gavin standing in his Daddy's hand. What a pro! (I think he kept his fingers in his mouth for comfort.)