Thanksgiving

Maybe because I haven't posted much lately I had trouble loading pictures today.  The first group of pictures is actually the last I took so they are a little out of order and I don't like that.  But I am thankful that they did load onto Blogger.

I had the most wonderful day. 

The above picture is of some Thanksgiving crafts.  Whitney, Leah, and I made the turkey nut cups.  Whitney's mother-in-law, Janice made the cookie candy turkeys.

After our meal we all went outside.  Our son-in-law, Ryan, had brought their tractor for us to use this winter if we have snow.  He and Tim worked on getting it in the Quonset and hooking the snow blower up to the back of it while the rest of us played outside ball games.  Then we took some family pictures.

We have a family tradition that everyone who wants to names one thing they are thankful for.  I said that I was thankful to have my whole family home and for better health than last Thanksgiving.

You might notice that our older sons are all a little beardy.  They said that it was No Shave November.

I think that I have a good looking family.

These two are a good looking couple.  We are so happy to have Ryan as a son-in-law.  And who would have thought we could all be outside in our shirt sleeves on Thanksgiving?  Enjoy it we did.

After pictures the men and Whitney helped Tim get some heavy things into the basement.   They got the freezer, the furnace, and some shelving moved down there.  One commented that he hoped this isn't going to become a new Thanksgiving tradition in our family.

Finally we could play bingo, another Thanksgiving family tradition.

Since we had not had our pie and coffee we did that as well.  You should have seen the prize table.  Never before did we have so many great prizes.

As the matriarch of my family I get to call the numbers.  I played, too, and won three prizes.

This is a before Thanksgiving picture.  Since we did no regular school this week I told the children we would just do fun stuff.  Leah loves to make crafts.  This is a cat we made one day.

Leah took a picture of her beloved Elly.

Another one of Leah's crafts is this hand sewn bag.

I am happy to report on the progress of construction this past week.  All the windows upstairs have been replaced as well as one in our bedroom and the one at the bottom of the stairs.  This is the biggest project right now.  Here's before...

...and during pictures. 

You will have to wait for the after photos as this is as far as they got on Wednesday.  I am thankful to be able to get into the front of my house and to go from my kitchen to my basement without having to go out my back door, go around to the front door, and crawl over or remove the foam insulation before going downstairs.

Our table before we ate

The kids all got here early so we had time for fun before dinner.  Since we now have a Wii we bowled for prizes. 

We had two groups of 4 players for each round.  Brandon won our game.  Dustin the next though Dustin's and my scores were the same.

Leah's score was only 4 points lower than Dustin's.

That's all the pictures I have.  I can think of many other reasons to be thankful.  I will say that I am thankful to have the new basement and windows.  I am enjoying putting things together and am going to go work down there right now.