Thanksgiving Visit

We enjoyed a nice visit with Jason's parents over the Thanksgiving holiday. It was perfect; not only did they get to celebrate Erik's birthday with us, but we got to celebrate Thanksgiving and a little bit of Christmas with them. How much more fun can you get?

The beginning of the visit was seeing the kids off to school, dance, and piano along with some errands. We also had some unusual snow covering the ground for a few days. The 8 years we've been here, we've never had snow stay on the ground that long (4-5 days) this time of the year. Because of that, once the snow melted, right before Thanksgiving, the next part of the visit was Abuelo helping Jason dig the third trench to fix the electrical on our shed that never passed the inspection way back over the summer. (Grandpa Jim did the first, Jason did the second with a friend and the kids, third time is the charm, right?) Along with the digging of the trench, we winterized our yard with the help of Gramms and Abuelo. So, besides cooking and eating, we did a lot of yard work!

This was the first dusting, We got more over the next few days.

Austin, tired after school, getting cozy with Abuelo.

Hard at work!

 Some new traditions we tried this year included out Tri-Wizard Turkeyment (I had to incorporate Harry Potter some how so the kids would enjoy it more). It was supposed to be a our family turkey trot, but since it was so cold, we decided to do it indoors and Karissa made an obstacle course for us. It included jumping on the indoor trampoline, jumping over a rope. climbing through a "tunnel" (the coffee table), and gobbling like a turkey a few times. Victoria won, of course.

The prize: a turkey pillow!

After completing the Turkeyment

Master chef

Erik ate part of a roll, That's progress for him!

The other tradition was that I made butternut squash soup for lunch to tide us over for the feast. I had made it a few weeks ago and was impressed at how yummy, easy, and yummy it was! There's so many foods to eat at dinner and never room for a good autumn soup, so I figured why not enjoy good food the whole day, but not get too full until the feast?

Decorating the tree.

After Thanksgiving was over, we decided since the men were finishing up stuff outside, we may as well decorate for Christmas.

At a Christmas tree exhibit.

Doesn't look like I took pictures of the actual Christmas trees, though!

We had a great time. Thanks for coming, Gramms and Abuelo!