Thanksgiving 2011

Breakfast table ready to welcome the fam...

Paris, almost seven, still has the demure chin tuck for pictures that she's done since she was a toddler!
Sarah was looking forward to the turkey dinner all day! She thought five o'clock would never come!
Champion turkey carver...
The boys squishing Bray during dessert.
The turkey needed a bit longer in the fryer...
The kids were good sports waiting even longer for the turkey to fully cook.
A "gang" (official word for a group of turkeys) of thanks...
The kids had fun a few days before Thanksgiving making a turkey for each person eating with us. Every person had their own color feather on which they wrote what they were thankful for about each person and one for Jesus, too. After completing all ten feathers about what they were thankful for, the person went to add one of their feathers to each person's turkey. That way, each turkey had a feather of thanks from each person in our family. Sarah's feathers were, of course, blue, Paris' naturally were pink, Fletch took orange, and Tommy's were his favorite color, green. I filled out red feathers and Charlie's were brownish. The kids were so tickled that everyone participated and had their own colors. It's the small things in life!

We are thankful for...

Our Thanksgiving "tablecloth" (cream bedsheet) was a place to record what we were thankful for this year. The kids were able to draw pictures and write notes about what they were thankful for right on the sheet. Mommy and Daddy had prepared notes about why we were thankful for each child and left the notes at each child's spot around the table for them to find in the morning when they first got up. The kids loved reading their notes about why we were thankful for them. We went around the table at our breakfast meal and took turns reading the notes out loud for all to enjoy. The kids then decided to hang them up for us to remember throughout the week. Their turkey handprint art and our thankful notes adorned the walls this week until we replaced them with some Christmas decorations. Fun, fun!

Sarah was thankful for her "hole" family, friends, teachers, her home and belongings, and God. She was particularly thankful for her super sweet art teacher, Ms. Kendra, from her Monart class on Tuesday nights. I'll post some of her finished pieces soon (they're so fun).
You can't read it on the wall behind Sarah but on Mommy's note apparently Noah wrote that he was thankful for Mommy's boobs! Our Daddy is soooo silly! Our family got kicks out of this but then forgot about it until after our first round of visitors left. We laughed thinking about what this couple must have thought as they read that. After that, Charlie just pointed it out to the other guests (all his guy friends!) much to my embarassment. :) Oh well!
When asked, Tommy said he was thankful for Daddy. Then after a three second pause, "And Batman." :) So both Daddy and Batman got drawn on the tablecloth. Fletcher was thankful for his family (and he drew each of us) and "nice friends" (so he drew some buddies from school).
Paris was thankful for Mrs. Appel (pronounced "apple"), her Kindergarten teacher. She drew a cute picture of her on the cloth.