Thanksgiving Break - Days Four and Five

Day four is technically Thursday, but I found a few more pictures from Wednesday that

I wanted to share. The sunset on the hills Wednesday night was gorgeous! They

were as pink as could be.

My little helper made pumpkin pies. They were delicious!

Bob, Ryan and I spent a lot of time this weekend playing Boggle. If anyone out there is

looking for a game to get for a child eight or over, this is an awesome game! Even though

Bob almost always wins, Ryan and I still have fun trying to find as many words as possible.

We started playing this two years ago, and I can see so much improvement in Ryan's spelling.

His lists used to be very short and mostly spelled incorrectly. Now, he'll get 10-20 words each round.

While we played, Emma painted. She's discovered that she can paint with her

markers if she uses water and a paintbrush. She gets the brush wet and then rubs it on the

tip of the marker. It's great because there's no mess! This is her reindeer.

Emma and I discovered that her upper and lower case alphabet

flashcards fit perfectly side by side along the top of the landing in our living room.

We spent Thanksgiving at home...alone. But we still had a great time. Luckily, no

one else got sick and Ryan was better after 24 hours. We enjoyed a full turkey dinner...and then
several days of leftovers. This was my first turkey dinner all on my own...and it was a success!

We sure missed being with family, though.

Our table set for four but with the leaf added in order to hold all of the food. (smile)

Lots of food, eh?

I tried using the crockpot for my stuffing this year, and it was

delicious! Crisp on the outside, perfectly moist in the inside, and not

taking up space in my oven.

I spent a bit of the evening on Thursday working on this. Can't wait until it's done...just

might need to keep it for myself. While I sewed, Bob and the kids played

table tennis, air hockey and some board games.

~~~

I don't have any pictures from Friday, but we had a great day.

Dad and Mom came up. Dad and Ryan went go-card racing and then to Max's to

build some work benches. Bob and Emma stayed home where it was nice and warm. Mom and I left about 11:30 in the morning, thinking JoAnn's wouldn't be busy. The first sign of just how busy they were was the fact that there were no carts. After snagging one from a customer that was leaving, we went immediately to the fabric cutting counter to get our numbers...B97 and B98. They were working on 4 or so, so that wasn't so bad. We got our fabric, wondered around a bit, and headed over towards the cutting counter. That was when we discovered they were on the A's still. That meant that there were roughly 150 people ahead of waiting...and some of them had carts full of bolts of fabric. And it was after 1:00 p.m. and we were starving!!!

I was just getting ready to leave Mom with our cart and head to Subway when we discovered the express lane!! If you had three or less cuts to be made, you could just a much shorter line. We ended up finishing when they reading A90, so there were still about 110 people ahead of us. We were so happy to give someone else our numbers and leave that store!

~~~

Bob, the kids and I spent a quiet evening at home on Friday evening...games, a Christmas movie,

more sewing for me. Just two more days and life gets back to normal...for 2.5 weeks anyway.