Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year! We truly have so much to be Thankful for.

Usually our Thanksgiving tradition includes 2 dinners. One with my mom and dad and brother's family and all of us. And the other with the Jason's mom's whole side of the family.

This year, my parents went to Louisiana to spend the holiday with their families, so we just had 1 dinner to attend on Friday afternoon. So, this marked the very first Thanksgiving day that we stayed home- just us.

At the last minute, (the day/night before, actually) I decided to cook us a dinner. No turkey. I got a pork tenderloin out of the deep freezer. I also made homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, cream cheese corn, rolls, and mini cherry pies.

I spent most of the day cooking, as I also had to prepare deviled eggs and a homemade pumpkin cheesecake for Friday's dinner. (That pumpkin cheesecake was one of the yummiest things I've ever put in my mouth. Jason LOVED it. He said it was very dangerous and asked me not to make it too often!!) I was totally ok with that. I love to be in my kitchen cooking. If only I didn't have to clean up my messes, though.... I ran my full dishwasher 4 times and hand washed several sink-fulls of dishes on Thursday....

We made a big breakfast that morning. Pancakes, Eggs and Sausage. Jason and Rhett helped me with the cooking. Rhett is really getting into cooking lately. It is so sweet. He BEGS me to help. It's not always easy for me to allow him to "help" because I'm usually in a hurry and I dread the extra messes that I will likely have to clean up. But, I've been making a conscious effort in the past few weeks to start allowing him to help just about anytime he wants to.

Here's him cracking eggs! This was the first time I let him do this task. I had him crack each egg into a small bowl, and then after inspecting to make sure there were no shells, he dumped it into the big bowl with the rest of the eggs. He really did a great job. Only 1 egg had any shell with it. That's about as good as I do!

Jason took this picture to show the one that escaped... this poor little egg, didn't make the bowl, and therefore, didn't make it onto the breakfast table!

Braden vaccumed the living room while we made dinner. Gracie was supervising...

After breakfast, we put up our Christmas tree. We sold our tree and all of our decorations at our yard sale, not expecting to be in a house for Christmas and knowing that we wouldn't have room for much of anything at the apartment...so, we're borrowing one of my mom's trees. She only has 1 house now, so she only needs 1 tree! It is a very cute tree and I am using some of her ornaments too. I have more of our family ornaments to put on it, but they're in somewhere in storage and we have to find them first... It's much smaller than we're used to, but this is all we have room for. I'm thankful we have room to put a tree at all!!

After a couple good, long rounds of front yard football, Jason and the boys came in and played a game of chess. Jason has been looking forward to the day when they would be old enough to play against him.... since I don't particularly like to play... They did a really great job. It was definately still an instructional game; it will be a while yet before they can play on their own. But, all 3 of them had a great time.

When we sat down at the dinner table, both of the boys volunteered to say the blessing and they both did a great job. As we ate dinner, we talked about Thanksgiving and took turns going around the table saying what we're thankful for.

Rhett went first. He is thankful for our home. I could have cried. There has been such a HUGE difference in him since we were able to move out of the apartment and into a home. It was very sweet to have him say that he's thankful for this without being prompted or asked.

Braden is thankful for Freedom, Friends and Family. In that order!

Daddy said he was thankful for having work, when so many people don't. He is thankful for our family- he told each of the kids that he loves them very much. And then, (here comes the mushy-gushy again!) he looked me in the eye and told me he was thankful for his "beautiful wife".

We asked Gracie what she loved and she said something about her "ba-ba" and then something about a princess. Then she said her princess bed. (Which I will post a picture of later... we put a princess canopy over her bed and she is in heaven!)

I am thankful for our Family and our Home and our Health. And a million other things too. I have a very thankful heart.

After dinner and getting the kitchen cleaned up (again!) we moved the dining room table into the living room and played our favorite family board game Monopoly. We played for a couple hours.

After our game and our dinner went down a little bit, we warmed up the cherry pies and ate them a la mode. Yummmmmmmmmyyyyy!

Of course, Miss Gracie the Mess-maker, took a bath in her ice cream. That's what we get for not paying attention to her while she was eating...

What a wonderful Thanksgiving day!

Friday, we went to Jason's parents house and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon of food and fellowship with family. Then, I stayed up until 2am doing online Christmas shopping.

I plan to go to bed early tonight!!

Speaking of being Thankful... we may have an offer on our house. Please pray with us. A couple who is new to Berryville, have looked at it a few times in the past week. Jason showed them the house again today, and they are very interested in the house. We're going to be trying to work out the details in the next few days. God is in control. We trust Him to work out the details according to His perfect will for our life.

I am so Thankful that I have a Heavenly Father to lead me and guide me through life. I can't imagine how I would make it through a single day, much less big life events without relying on His strength. I am so weak on my own.

I hope all of you enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday too. And I guess this is our official welcome to the Christmas season!!