Giving Thanks

This week for Family Home Evening, we had a talent show.  I gave the kids 2 rules - The first was that they HAD to do or share something,  and the second was that every comment about the things shared had to be 100% positive.  David showed off his spinning and rolling skills, James showed us his dragon drawing, Evie played her flute, Aaron showed a fancy origami flower he had made, Anna played her trumpet, Eileen sang, I played and sang and Daddy shared his baking talents by sharing his Boston Cream Pie with us.  It was a wonderful uplifting night!  

Tuesday was the kids last day of school for the week, so on Wednesday and Thursday morning, we met up at a park with Sandi and Taz and Kai.  We had a great time playing together and running around together and walking together.  The kids were so happy to see their cousins and I was so glad that we had some nice weather for being outside in!  

Thanksgiving was pretty chill.  Dan smoked the turkey, pies and cranberry sauce were made the night before, and Eileen did rolls, so all we had left was the asparagus, mashed potatoes and gravy, and stuffing.  I'm pretty sure this is the only Thanksgiving I have ever spent with only my immediate family - even when I was in the hospital for my surgery during Thanksgiving, I think we had family visit.  Dan made it a bit more special by pulling out the fancy serving dishes and plates and glasses.  

Friday morning, we had some errands to run, then in the afternoon, we tried out a place that Dan found on FB where you could cut your own tree.  They had lots of animals too - which the kids loved, but we ended up not getting our tree there, so after, we stopped at Home Depot on the way home and got our tree, but the tree we got was beautiful and the kids loving getting to see and hold and feed the animals!  

Eileen has been wanting to watch an anime show that her friends in her chat group keep talking about, so she enlisted Anna and I to watch it with her - the funny thing is that it's about volleyball, and Eileen has no interest in sports, but her friends like it, so she's watching it with us.  We told her to recommend it to Grandpa so he could talk about it with us too.  :)  

We spent Saturday getting Christmas Decorations out (tree will get decorated on Monday) and set up all over the house and we are finding that we have more places to decorate in this house, we got everything out and it still feels like we should have more.  So we will check out the after Christmas sales for next year!  :) 

Church today was wonderful and we had a fun afternoon playing games and chatting together.   Our real estate agent dropped off a couple pies this week.  Knowing we wouldn't be able to get through all that pie, we let the kids have at it.  I think they ate the whipped cream more than they ate the pie.  :) 

Last week President Nelson asked us to flood social media with gratitude - it has been so wonderful seeing my facebook feed filled with gratitude and joy!  What a wonderful way lighten our hearts this season!