This past November we hosted Thanksgiving at our place and actually had relatives close enough to join the feast! It was such a treat to have my Mom, brother Robert, brother Randy and his kids all come down from Idaho to stay for a few days. I'm afraid I was enjoying myself so much I didn't really take pictures of their visit. We enjoyed playing games together and eating yummy food for days. They also helped me with some Days For Girls service projects (I haven't really mentioned it on the blog, but I volunteer regularly with Days For Girls now and am a board member for our chapter. It's such a treat to volunteer with wonderful women!). The kids helped trim, fray-check, fold, and package liners destined for Haiti. It was really fun and my niece Gracie raved how much she enjoyed it. I really love doing service projects with family or friends. It's so fun to laugh together and chat while engaged in a good cause, and I absolutely love the idea of doing service on Thanksgiving Day. It's such a good way to express our gratitude!
(Unfortunately my pics of the project didn't usually tun out- they were mostly too blurry to use. I'm so bummed I didn't get a good pic of the cousins together!)
Matthew has really enjoyed cooking this year, and is an eager student in the kitchen. He was Nathan's sous-chef this year. He took such pride in helping with the pies in particular. I'm so happy he enjoys cooking- he is often baking yummy breakfasts for the family on Saturday mornings. I keep telling him that his college roommates will love his cooking, and it's an important skill to have in place before he leaves to serve a mission.
Nathan took a day off from work Wednesday so he could spend a full day cooking for the feast. He always looks forward to Thanksgiving with such delight. I'm SO grateful he enjoys cooking, since it's such a big part of most holidays and I really don't enjoy it. It's such a blessing to our family!
I forget our official headcount this year, but I think we had between 35-40 people here for the Thanksgiving feast. We had tables set up all over the house! The food was delicious, and it was such a pleasure to spend the day with so many relatives. We were blessed to share the feast with my Mom, Robert, Randall and his kids, Blena (Ben and Elena), Dambi (Adam and Aubbi), the Zimmerman family, and a bunch of Elena's relatives.
We were so busy I didn't get any pictures of the feast or guests....we'll have to settle for this picture of the dessert table:
After the Thanksgiving feast, lots of girl cousins sat by the fire and worked on cutting ribbon and threading bags for the DFG project. They threaded 75 bags! What hard workers they were!
We ended up having the Zimmerman cousins spend the weekend with us for three days. The children had SUCH fun playing together every day and staying up late giggling every night. They were a delight to have over, and it didn't seem like we had an extra 10 children around. They are such good kids and were always offering to be helpful around the house. We loved having them over!
Joseph decided it was a fun game to wash the dishes, so he was a great help in the kitchen (for about 10 minutes until he decided something else was more fun- but I'll take any help!)
It was such a blessed weekend filled with delicious food, games, late night movies, playing at the park, and lots of laughter. The last day of the weekend, a yucky stomach bug made the rounds through the children. Our upstairs was like an infirmary. I had a sick child quarantined in bed in 4 different rooms as we tried to contain the spread of illness. I admit, there was an element of fun to 'making the rounds' through the rooms checking on everyone and delivering more drinks and crackers. If I pretended to be a nurse, it was a lot more fun and less drudgery. Luckily the bug passed relatively quickly and children were back to normal in about 24 hours.
