This Past Week

It's been a slow week and not much happening here. We finished our current book The Pink Maple House by Christine Govan and we are ready for a new book. I'm actually considering a Christmas book now - though we usually wait till the first of December. But, a month is not a long time to read as many Christmas books as we have and we have started a little early this year anyway. So, tomorrow I guess we will pick our new read aloud and it will probably be a Christmas one. 

We have started doing a little decorating here even though Thanksgiving is not even here. But, we just felt like since we stay home so much it would actually add a little joy and the kids were definitely enthusiastic. So, we have put up a small kitchen tree and a little garland and just a few other things. We have a bunch of buckets out in the family room full of stuff that we are going through and deciding if we will use this year. The kids love to go through them and pull out stuff to play with - especially cottages and people and little trees. My kids have played with this stuff for years and years and it is fun to see Piper and Bella playing with the same little cottages that their older sisters and brothers played with so long ago.  

We are having a small Thanksgiving this year due to COVID. We will only have our family that lives in our home for dinner. With such a large family there is much greater risk and three of my daughters work in a hospital. After much thought and discussion we decided we just should not risk so many people here at one time especially since we have several children that are high risk. It is sad and I will miss all our family. This is a first for us. But, next year we will all be together again on Thanksgiving day. 

Thanksgiving and Our Christmas Tree

We had a nice Thanksgiving day and a house full of people. There were 54 of us all together and our house is not huge by any means. But, things went really well considering how many kids were here running around. 

We always get our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving and this year was no different. We went to the same lot we went to last year and literally got the first tree we looked at. Everyone agreed immediately on the same tree and so we were done very quickly. We got it home and up in the stand  waiting to be decorated as soon as possible. 

Tomorrow we will start our Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas again and the kids are very excited to get started. 

Thanksgiving and Getting Ready For Christmas

We had a nice Thanksgiving with family and friends. It really was a good day and we all enjoyed visiting and it would have been truly perfect except for the fact that Joey could not make it. He was feeling very bad and could not come - though Shannon brought the kids for a little while so we got to visit with them. We are hoping he will be feeling better soon. 

I actually got almost no pictures of our day and I really regret that. It just seemed to get late so fast and there was so little light that I only took a few pictures and most of them were just too dark. I usually do a much better job in the camera department, but not this year. So the only two pictures I have to post of Thanksgiving day are these next two. The first one is of two of my girls, Katie and Emily - one a nurse and one a police officer. Then I have one of adorable baby Finn - 3 months old. He was not the youngest here though, as our newest grandson made it and he is only 2 weeks old. 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we had a total of 46 people here Thanksgiving day. It may sound like a lot, but it didn't seem like that many. 

As soon as Thanksgiving was over Bethany and Tess got the idea to finish the tree up in their room. Bethany put the lights on it - clear this year. She wanted clear lights and to spray the tree with snow and only use a few ornaments. They have a small tree that we bought at Walmart for only $22 and they love it. 

The last three pictures are of our granddaughter, Evelyn, who definitely wanted to get in on the decorating.  Everyone had fun and the tree is finished. It looks nice and I think Bethany, Piper and Tess are happy. 

Thanksgiving

It's so late I don't think I will post anything about Thanksgiving except to say that we had a very nice day with family and friends -- 49 of us together to be exact. I will just post some of the pictues from our day. I am very thankful for this time we all had together.