I Am Thankful

We had a wonderful time at Thanksgiving, I thought I would share....My daughter Lindsay and her husband Jeremy and their three sweet little children (our grandchildren) spent a week with us over the Thanksgiving holidays.

We went to a mandarin orange grove and tasted orange treats.

We played at the playground multiple times, playing tag and chasing and laughing!

We watched "Rise of the Guardians" and munched on popcorn.

We visited Grandpa's office and got treats from his assistant.

We had a tour of the local fire station, where Bridger and Kennedy dressed up in miniature fire suits!

We had pizza at our favorite pizza joint.

We played Dominoes and nibbled on treats.

We played hide and go seek in the house at night, with all the lights off.......

We made some crafts, visited, played, ate and laughed some more.

Kennedy loves playing with the Barbies I had when I was a little girl.  I have a big box of them along with lots of clothes, some of them were made by my mother.

There was some silky green moss growing under the fir trees in the backyard.  Kennedy thought that some fairies might live there so she built them a home.  I gave her an old shoe box and with the help of her mother, she cut a door and arranged some pretty red, orange and gold leaves along with some berries and little stones.  The next morning, there was shimmer in the box and she knew that the fairies had been there!

Lindsay and Kennedy found the fairy glitter.  It really does look like a magical fairy forest.

Bridger can hardly wait to play with Jordan, Addison and Sean's Lego.  He is constantly building things, Lego is his favorite toy.  For the Reflections contest at school, he reenacted a construction worker throwing him a tootsie roll from his backhoe, out of Lego!  He won first place and will be going on to the state competition.

Since Bridger is old enough to read chapter books, I introduced him to Tintin books, another childhood memory of mine.

Charlotte loves her panda pillow that she has taken all the stuffing out of.  She also loves her pink Ruff, a pink stuffed dog.  When she is around them, she can't do anything else but suck her thumb.

Charlotte is so busy!  Busy finding the gum in my sewing room desk drawer, busy finding treats in the pantry, busy trying to sneak Mom's iphone away from her, busy unrolling all of the toilet paper in the bathroom, busy taunting her older brother and sister,  busy keeping us laughing all the time!

This is our Thanksgiving feast.

Green beans with toasted almonds, homemade cranberry sauce with some orange zest, and the turkey of course!

Ruth Chris sweet potato recipe (it is dessert!!!), stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy.

We served almost everything that is pictured in my Thanksgiving Dinner Quilt.  It hung right beside us as we ate.  I don't have a Christmas quilt yet, so I keep the Thanksgiving one up through the Christmas holidays.

I can't forget the mushroom turnovers, it has become a family tradition.  I got the recipe from a Good Housekeeping magazine in the early 80's.  Jeremy said that when he and Lindsay were spending their first Thanksgiving together as a married couple, that Lindsay told him they had to have mushroom turnovers.  He thought that was a strange request until he tried them and then he understood!

I wrote the recipe on the Thanksgiving Dinner quilt.

Here we are at our Thanksgiving table with so much to be thankful for.  We gave thanks for the rest of our family who was not with us, and especially for our son Sean who is serving a two year mission in  Porto Alegre South, Brazil.