Thanksgiving Break

Thanksgiving break is one of my favorites!  We don't usually travel, Billy takes some time off, and we just get to hang out in our PJs and live slowly.

The day before Thanksgiving, I popped into the twins' class, and their sweet teacher had made them a pancake 'snack' to celebrate. = )

William wore his creation around for a couple of days too!

Grace practiced her sight words over the break (totally unprompted) and wanted me to send them to her teacher.

One of my projects weas to clean out clothes.  We got rid of a pile, but it never seems like enough.

For our meal this year we had Bob Evans and it did not disappoint!  Easy to heat up, tasty food, and easy clean up.  My mom came to join us, my sister just wanted leftovers. lol.

As we were setting up the Christmas decorations, Olaf came out of the box.  He is one of our outside displays, and the twins were enamored.  He's been with us for years, I got him at a white elephant MOPS party back in Houston!

Also, setting up this year was a smidge warmer, and so much easier. I labeled my boxes in the order of the lights!

And I marked how far down my extension cord I need to unravel!

This year's tree.

All of my children have taken turns with the wooden Nativity that my mom found (so that they would leave my display one alone.)

And Emily and Grace wrapped the first gift of the year!

We tried and failed, to make a gingerbread house.  According to the internet, I needed to use the recipe provided, not the cookie dough from the grocery store.  Who knew? ; )

So, with the rest of the gingerbread dough, we made cookies!

And more cookies!

Group photo in front of our tree!

Oh, and on Saturday, Billy and I toured our little town for Small Business Saturday.  We ate at the cafe, shopped the boutiques, stopped at the grocery store, and headed to the library to recycle some batteries.  It was a good time.

later days

Tree Lighting

Our Village had their Tree lighting on Sunday about the same time that Billy's relatives were heading out.  So, I took all five of my little ones to the tree lighting solo.  We missed out last year, and since we were slightly over zealous, we were the second or third ones there.  Next year, I need to park elsewhere though.*

A trio of ukulele players entertained us with Christmas music until it was time to light the tree. = )  My children weren't nearly as impressed as I was, but did enjoy running around with some of their classmates.

Santa arrived by firetruck, ringing sleigh bells as he greeted everyone.

Somehow, we found ourselves at almost the very front of the line, and they were the second group to go see Santa. My children practically buried him, as they descended upon him.

They each received a candy cane from Mrs. Claus, and then took a turn in the cookie line.  We found an out of the way spot to enjoy the cookies.

We regrouped once more in front of the tree.  But we were all cold and ready to go at this point, but my car was stuck.

We took the opportunity to cross the street to the grocer and bought milk.  It was a good call, since we did end up with every bit of snow they predicted.

later days

*When it was time to go, we were blocked in by the firetruck.

Yearly Christmas Ornaments

Keeping with our tradition of picking out new ornaments, we have new pictures to add to the collection!

Alice went for the big and bold, pink fluffy ball:

Emily picked out another sweet little bird.  You can see the one she picked out a few years ago on the tree behind her (down by her hip):

William found his favorite paw patrol pup Skye:

 

And Grace's love of Hello Kitty is a secret to none, so she was very excited about this find:

 

Juliet has latched on to the little Mermaid, and just loves it.  One of the pictures I snapped before remembering to grab the Santa hat was my favorite:

 

later days

You can see the pictures from last year in this post.

Runner up/outtake pictures:

P.S. I have a big long post about thanksgiving that I started, but I went down sick for two entire days.  Sarah even brought us dinner each night, because I just couldn't execute my normal activities. = (  So I wanted to blog about thanksgiving before posting these pictures, but I am just so excited to share them!

P.P.S. Downsizing from a 9 foot tree to a 6 foot tree meant getting rid of all my non sentimental ornaments, but we are still short of space.  I think we might have to get a slightly larger tree next year, to accommodate all of our family traditions! = )