Thanksgiving 2011

We're only a day past Thanksgiving and between Christmas tree picking, a cousin having his annual house lighting and the relentless Black Friday advertising it feels like old news.  I love the Christmas season (both the secular and religious seasons which are pretty separate in my mind, but are both celebrated by our family), but it's too bad that Thanksgiving gets short shrift.  While it's not exactly a religious holiday, it's one of the less commercialized holidays so it sort of has a reverence about it and ability to cause reflection that is sadly being obscured in other holidays.

We kicked off our Thanksgiving with a service at our church on Wednesday night.  Andy was still at work so the girls and I met my parents.  As always, Craig gave a great sermon and I was challenged to think about giving thanks and being joyful at all times.  He read from Philippians 1:3-6 and reminded us that while Paul was praising God and giving thanks he was chained to a Roman guard.  I wish I could link to the sermon, but I don't think it was recorded.

Poor Andy came home for only about 10 minutes and then had to turn around to head back to the hospital and didn't come back until the morning.  I wish he could have been home, but I felt worse for the kids who were unfortunate enough to be in the PICU.  My dad came by in the morning to get the girls and they all went to visit my grandmother.  They also made a stop at Dunkin Donuts, the beach and my parents house.  That gave me some time to clean up and shower which was nice. 

We headed up to my Aunt Karen and Uncle Franco's house in the early afternoon.  It was a lovely and relaxing afternoon.  I really missed my sisters (and nephew and brothers-in-law) but they were all with their in-laws.  However, I got to spend time with my cousins who in many ways feel like siblings to me and my cousin Jonathan's in-laws were there as well which was nice.  Maddie had so much fun with Becky and keeps asking when she'll come spend time at our house.  (I think she felt a bond to her when I explained that her job is "doing projects" every day because as some of you know, Maddie's favorite thing to do is undertake projects, crafts, etc.)

I tried again for a Christmas card picture and still didn't get one.  I think they look a little zombie-like in the one where they are both looking at the camera.

I really need to work on white balance.  I'm usually pretty lazy and leave it on auto white balance, but as you can see the camera doesn't always do such a great job since the shots above are too cool and the ones below are too warm.  I used my external flash a couple times and it's definitely better than the built in but makes me wonder if the next Speedlight up from mine would be even better...not quite in the budget, but something to research.

Maddie loves to do puzzles.

Andy was still catching up on sleep after we ate. (For the record, the meal was delicious.)

Avonlea enjoyed Jonathan's game with her kitty cat.

There was a large puzzle (maybe 1000 pieces) that kept luring people into the sunroom.  I think everyone sat down to work on it at some point.

Becky was so patient with the girls!

More puzzlers

 

 

 

 

 

 

The turkey was my contribution.  It was rice krispie treats covered with chocolate icing and yellow sugar.  Maddie had a great time helping me make it, but to be honest it was more the novelty of it that was great than the actual taste.  I'm not a big fan of most chocolate icings.  I held it on my lap during the ride up and after smelling it for an hour I couldn't bear the thought of eating it.  Later in the evening I did pick on the rice krispie treat center a bit.

The Lees brought an assortment of Korean desserts that were fun to sample.

Even more puzzlers

 

 

Playing Set

Making espresso

Maddie was dying to help with the big puzzle, but I knew she'd just get frustrated and possibly lose the tiny pieces.  It did inspire me to get her some more puzzles for Christmas.  Obviously she's not ready for the 1000 piece puzzles, but since she can race through her current puzzles which go up to about 48 pieces it's probably time for a more advanced one.

So that's our Thanksgiving.  I hope we can keep a spirit of Thanksgiving in our hearts as we look to celebrating the birth of Christ because I can't think of a better thing for which to be thankful!