* thankful *

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving to all those out there in blog-land. We're so thankful to the friends and family who check in here - the fact that you even care enough to want to know what we're up to means so much. I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgiving weekends filled with yummy food and time with family and friends.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner with my parents and some of their friends. It was a really perfect and relaxed day. And the food was pretty amazing. Just look at the size of the turkey:

I wish I had the foresight to take a picture of the table to document all the work that went into the wonderful food, but my stomach got the better of me and I forgot all about the camera. Luckily my mom had hers and our friends took some fun pictures of the family:

I absolutely LOVE holiday weekends because they mean we get extra family time. We used Friday to reward the kids for filling out their star chart (a make-shift behavior chart where the kids earned stars for good behavior).  Chuck-E-Cheese was surprisingly uncrowded and Chris and I had as much fun as the kids. We were all pretty sad to have dad go back to work on Monday but it helped knowing we made the most of the days he had off.

Here is a picture of our "mantel" decorated for Thanksgiving. We don't really have much in the way of decorations, but the kids bring home lots of fun crafts from school and the end result is pretty festive:

 

And now the Christmas season is here again. Thanksgiving things are put away, Christmas decor is making its way around the house, and the Advent calendar is making its second appearance tomorrow. Hopefully I'll do a better job of documenting things this year. Tomorrow's activity is a paper count-down chain - the kids have been begging for one since we saw it decorating a table of books at Powell's. They'll be so excited to make their own! I just love the simple pleasures of Christmas!