Thanksgiving prep/Christmas prep

I really hate to use both Thanksgiving and Christmas in the same title.  But it needed to be done.  I am a very firm believer in REALLY celebrating Thanksgiving.  I think it is often a "forgotten" holiday.  Instead of really giving thanks, people tend to eat a lot of food, then its a shopping holiday.  1) I love to eat, so I am very excited to HAVE Thanksgiving, but I do like it for more than the food.  2) I don't love to shop, especially when people are literally fighting to save a few bucks.  Plus we don't have the money to shop, so I find it silly.  3) I would MUCH rather spend the day with my family enjoying one another's company and playing games with them.    

For preschool, O's teacher (grandma) also really gets the kids involved in Thanksgiving.  She has them dress up as indians (although, K said the other day, that it is nicer to call them native americans.  I think her teacher has been saying this to them at school.  I thought it was funny. It's a lot more fun to play cowboys and indians, not cowboys and native americans.).

And we had to squeeze in O's birthday during the week. (again, her preschool teacher is SO nice and makes individual cakes for each of the kids.)

Then they learn about the pilgrims and dress up as pilgrims at school.

The hubby's grandpa is REALLY not doing well.  Not that granny is doing any better, but all of a sudden grandpa took a turn for the worse.  So we went up to their house to visit them for a few minutes.  I needed family pictures for our Christmas card, so we went out in the fields and took a few pictures.  I don't know what O is doing in this picture.  I didn't notice it when it was a thumbnail, only when it was bigger.  It's silly, though!!

Here's the family picture I like the best. Isn't the background beautiful!!

I have been wanting to get a picture of the girls with their great-granny for a while now.  Grandpa was asleep. We'll have to go up another time to get a picture of them with him.  I hope we still have time for that!

Then we went up to the mountains with 4 of my sisters to cut down Christmas trees.

 This is something we have done (some years WITH sisters, most years we cut them all down.  not my favorite way.  I prefer them there to pick out their own trees.) for 12 years.  I love this tradition - and we always have a lot of fun doing it.

 There wasn't much snow up there (surprisingly!) and it was sunny.  It was beautiful!!

Another Thanksgiving tradition I have been doing since I was a little girl is making candy turkeys.  Here's the kids working on their turkeys.

This morning, we got our tree decorated.  It has been sitting in the house with lights on for a whole 2 days, and we finally got it decorated this morning.  The kids were VERY anxious to get some decorations on it.

It's been a busy few weeks - and this time of year doesn't get any slower!!  Here's to another busy week!!