Thanksgiving 2018

Happy Thanksgiving!  

The holidays can be a little hard for me because I'm not used to doing these dinners on our own.  I wasn't really looking forward to it.  But we stayed home and did our own thing and it ended up being really fun.  A friend with similar feelings was talking to me about it and said that it is important to create a good holiday experience for our children without comparing it to our own growing up experience.  She was so right.  It was amazing how excited the kids were for Thanksgiving, while I wasn't quite seeing the big deal.  They never once complained about not having extra family around.  We took time for each child to help make a dish and they loved it.

Each day leading up to Thanksgiving Penelope read a quote to us about gratitude.  There are some amazing blessings we will be promised if we have a thankful heart.  It is something I believe in and am working on.

In fact, Bob really made most of the meal.  I felt like he was being a bit ambitious, but it he was able to do it all.  We had a Turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, glazed carrots, and cranberry sauce, not to mention three pies.  The kids were in heaven.  I really think everyone thoroughly enjoyed eating as much food as possible.

Before and after we ate, we worked on setting up Christmas decorations.  With Bob working on Saturdays Thanksgiving was really our only day to get outside things done.  I mostly worked on flocking our Christmas tree in the back yard while Bob set up the lights in the front yard.

I don't really think they are supposed to be up on that balcony, but no one got hurt so I guess it was ok.  It's more of a faux balcony, those are just windows above it, no door.  We don't have a ladder, or a place to keep one if we did, so this really was the best way to get the lights up that high.

All the Japanese people were looking at our house while they walked by.  I even heard a couple of them say "illumination," as they passed.  The Japanese do not put up lights on the outside of their houses, but they do have big illumination festivals where you can go and see the lights at a park.  I'll miss seeing lots of houses decorated for Christmas this year, but seeing our house lit up does put a smile on my face.

These next pictures are from Sunday, but I wanted to share them here because they were just taken when we were hanging out at the house much like we did on Thanksgiving.

I love this one of the kids playing cards.  I've often played Uno with them and work hard fighting to keep Calista away from the cards while she screamed.  The kids on their own had a better idea, just let her do her own thing and then she will be happy and we can play in peace.

 On Thanksgiving we also played a few games and even had just enough time to watch the movie, "Freebirds."  I cut out half way through to take a shower and finish cleaning up after the pie fun.