Happy Thanksgiving

I almost wrote happy turkey day but then I realized that makes thanksgiving all about the turkey.  Which it isn't :) So happy Thanksgiving to you! 

Our Thanksgiving started a few days ago.   Mark and I were able to get away for a night last Friday.  I am so thankful for friends who took our kids and enabled us to have alone time.  So grateful for family of choice!   

We left for Denver on Sunday morning (skipped church).  I'm so thankful for a staff that is highly capable and willing to let us leave early and beat the weather! 

On Monday I had a follow up appointment for my LASIK surgery.  I have to get my right eye redone.  Unfortunately it got a bit over corrected.  Not super excited to do it again BUT I'm so thankful that I can see, that I had the surgery done (goodbye glasses and contacts!!) and that this second surgery is part of the warranty on my eyes ;) 

After the appointment I took Kate clothes shopping.  I'm so thankful for pastor appreciation which allowed us to get all 3 kids some clothes they all needed.  I also got alone time with each kid individually which was precious and a blessing.  I took Kale later that afternoon and Jack on Tuesday. 

After shopping with Kate, we met my sisters and my nieces and nephew for a picture with Santa.  We've not actually ever done that with our kids but it turned out to be a cute picture.  I'm thankful for family, for sisters, for beautiful, healthy kids.  Kale holding my nephew, Gavin, is hilarious! 

Monday night we had my in-town siblings over to my parent's house (my folks were in Texas) and had a big Chinese dinner and then did our annual Thanksgiving candy turkeys.  I think we've been doing these since I was in kindergarten.  I'm thankful for old traditions with new family. 

On Tuesday we headed up to Mark's parent's house in Boulder.  I'm thankful that although our families live far away from us (or we live far away from them which is probably more accurately how they feel) that they live close together so we can see everyone when we come up. 

The kids got to do art at grandma's house.  Thankful that they are creative!  Aren't they cute?

We had our Thanksgiving with Mark's family on Wednesday due to everyone's schedules.  That's why I'm able to blog today.  We already did our thing! 

We spent the whole morning cooking which makes me thankful for electricity, stoves, microwaves and dishwashers.  And many hands making light(ish) work.  I'm thankful we didn't have to hunt, kill and dress our own turkey....or grow our own potatoes...so much thankfulness on Thanksgiving! 

We made pilgrim hats on Tuesday so we could wear them at dinner while we shared what were thankful for.  I'm thankful for a husband who will have fun with me. 

We had a good time eating, laughing and sharing with family.  I'm so thankful to have married into a fun family that loves each other. 

Today we are sitting around recovering.  We watched the Macy's parade and a few Duck Dynasty episodes.  All while the rest of the country is either eating or shopping.  We, of course, had to have fun with beards. 

Happy Thanksgiving y'all! 

Remember Last Week?

Yeah me too. It was Thanksgiving and I'm finally posting some pictures!!!

I will admit that I have been a bit on the busy side. Many things to blog about that have happened in the last 5 days. Like our Pastor resigning, Kate losing her first tooth and putting up all our Christmas decorations (we crank it out all at once rather than over a few days...). I tried posting something yesterday but I couldn't get my pictures up. And I'm really trying to include pictures to make my ramblings a bit more interesting :)

So to catch up on our last week:

We spent Thanksgiving in Greeley with Mark's mom's family. We hadn't seen them in almost 4 years so it was so great to meet up with them and catch up! And see how stinkin huge their kids had grown as well as introducing them to Jack-a-bo.

Our serious picture
And the crazy fun oneWe didn't realize that we were missing someone until I looked at these pictures that Mark's cousin's wife sent me. Another cousin's wife is missing! How in the world do you have everyone in the house in a picture and miss one? Who knows. Sorry Nicole!

The little kids tableThe fancy "big kids" tableMy beautiful sister-in-law, Julie, and my wonderful father-in-law, DougJulie is preggers with my first nephew, Kieran Arthur. She's due any day now! We begged him to come out early so we could meet him but he resisted. Bummer for us :(

Here's Julie with my other beautiful sis-in-law, Alisha, who is due the end of January. She recently was put on bed rest and we're praying that little girly stays in there until she's ready! She stood up long enough for a picture!Mark's grandma - we call her Dorothy the Great - is 96! We had a picture taken of her and our kids and then her and all the great grandkids.And a final pic of Mark and I. Sorry for all the grainy pictures. Hard to take them with low light.Whew! Finally got that one done. Now for like 5 more....I promise to work on them this week! So much to say!

After the Fact...

That seems my blog-life motto for now. I'll write about it long after the fact...Like this blog for example. I'm going to recall events from Thanksgiving!

We had a great trip up to Golden to spend Thanksgiving with my family. My parents and sister, Meghan, came down the weekend before so the kids and I rode up with them on Sunday and Mark drove up on Wednesday just in time to have dinner with his parents (it was really great to be able to hang out with them for awhile while we were up there).

We spent the week shopping, registering at BabiesRUS (for my cute prego sister Meghan), cooking, baking, talking, playing games, sleeping, playing and just having a good time together as family.

Thanksgiving day, my sis Kelly, Mark, Kale, Kate and I, went to a church in Commerce City (near Denver) to serve Thanksgiving dinner to some homeless families in the area. Kelly works at a highschool out there and knew about the dinner and wanted to go serve. We were happy to go.

Once we got there we found out that we didn't get to actually serve the meal (they had a catering company donate the food and their time - which was amazing). But I was bummed to not actually be able to serve. I would've loved to have been able to talk to each person as they came in. As it turns out we were asked to mingle with the families and just love on them (much more difficult really - I wish it weren't more so but it was). I think it was harder because we had the kids with us. They were quite shy. So we just hung around with the little kids who were there and loved on them. That was nice. I was glad we did it. I hope we can do something similar in the years to come. With so many people without a place to go or family to spend time with (both things I am very blessed with)...

After serving we went back to my parent's house and cooked and cooked and cooked. Seriously I felt like I cooked for 3 days! {oh wait I did...} Only to eat for like 20 minutes and then beg the men to help clean up (and I'm proud to say that my husband was an awesome dish do-er!).

Friday was the last CU/Nebraska game. The end of a rivalry between my husband and I (and we really only had it to poke fun and talk smack to each other - other than that we don't really care all that much - yeah I know we've gotta find better things to do....).

And Saturday we drove home. Not much fun in that.

We, as usual, are crazy busy but this time of the year feels even more so. Stuff going on every night of the week. For real. However, we are more than thrilled that next Sunday evening we'll be going on the Polar Express. The kids (and I!) are stinkin' excited. Mark is too. Someone in our church blessed us with the tickets to be able to go. Mark and I have always wanted to go but we just couldn't justify it quite yet. So it was a sweet, unexpected blessing and we are so excited. I promise to blog with real pictures about our wonderland adventure.

I'm working on blogging more frequently again. This one in particular I started yesterday but didn't have time to finish till today. Like I said, I'm workin' on it.... :)