Thanksgiving 2012

Thanksgiving was great this year.  We didn't have any extended family plans on the actual holiday, so that gave us some freedom to do other things.  Mike and I decided a few days before Thanksgiving that we wanted the kids to do some kind of service for Thanksgiving.  After quite a bit of thought and phone calls, we decided on taking the kids to a local hospital to visit long-term patients.  The kids colored a bunch of Happy Thanksgiving pictures, we bought a stack of children's books, and off we went.   We met some incredible people that day.  The kids read books to the sick children that for the most part couldn't even talk, but the smiles they gave them when they turned each page was one of the most touching things I've seen in really long time.  Then they delivered their cards to the older people that were all alone for Thanksgiving.  Will surprised me the most.  Since he's 3 I thought he would stare at their tubes and deformities and ask all kinds of questions, but instead he showed so much love and walked up to each person and said "Happy Thanksgiving" in his sweet little voice.   I knew we would feel good afterwards, but I wasn't expecting the overwhelming amount of gratitude we left with.  Gratitude that we are all healthy and that we have each other to spend each day with.  We are so blessed!  

On Friday we got together with my family for Thanksgiving.  After we ate, we made the traditional ginger bread houses.  My mom is amazing... She spends days making each family a gingerbread house with candy stained glass windows.  Then we come along and get to decorate it.

I love Will's face here!  

The finished product! 

Here it is on my table.  My favorite part is Santa's sleigh on the roof and Santa popping out of the chimney- that was Morgan's idea.  

The best part is, my mom added lights inside so when we plug it in, it lights up!!  And after about 5 minutes the lights warm it up inside and the house smells like gingerbread.  It smells amazing!!  

Then we drew names for the cousin gift exchange.  I thought it would be fun to make scratch off cards with the name hidden underneath.  The kids loved scratching off their ticket to see who they had.  It was fun! (And I sticker coded the cards to be sure they didn't draw one of their siblings... It worked perfectly!)  

Meg was happy with her name.  She wouldn't put down her card :)

Another fun tradition on Thanksgiving that we've done for years is getting money from my parents... Oh YEAH!  Let me explain.  My parents have to buy Christmas presents for a million people, well, quite a few people anyway.  It's overwhelming for them as you can imagine.  They get presents for around 30+ grandkids plus 11 adult children.  So for the adult children they give us money on Thanksgiving and ask us to buy our own present.  (Then my mom can focus on buying for the grandkids, which if so much more fun!)  After we buy our present, we wrap it and bring it to our Christmas party and open it in front of my parents.  They love it and we love picking out something we really want.  It's a win-win!    

Happy Thanksgiving!