A Wonderful Thanksgiving

We ended the month with two special family thanksgiving meals. On November 26th my family made our annual trip to the Orem Chuck-A-Rama where we filled ourselves full of delicious food. We love going there because the picky people can always find something they like to eat....and there are no dishes to wash. This year I made the mistake of letting Peter have a cup full of blue slushie first. Then, he promptly drank the entire thing and wouldn't eat anything else the rest of the night. Note to self for next year - do not let Peter drink anything other then water.

We then made our annual pilgrimage to the local Mall to walk all that food off. In reality we took the kids over to the play area and the adults talked while the kids played. All the inner mall stores closed early (like 7pm) so there weren't a lot of people around.

The highlight of the night was watching my Dad (who is over 60) run at lighting speed to scare Luke as he was going down the slide in the tree house. It was so funny! I love that my Dad has stayed active and that he can play with the grandkids just as easily as any 20 year old.

On Thanksgiving Day we zipped up to the Thomas side for a late afternoon meal. Mom T's rolls are to die for and all the other food was equally delicious. For some odd reason I wasn't in the mood for turkey, so I didn't eat any. Weird.  Brandon came prepared with a game and I think it's safe to say that we have a new favorite family game - Mafia. I think we played 7 rounds. Poor Peter had his little heart broken on the first round when Gpa and Aunt Allison killed him off right away. He was so thrilled to be playing a game with the adults that he sat and sobbed thru the rest of the rounds. I have a feeling that's just one of the many family memories he will carry with him to adulthood.

Here on the home front, we did a couple of craft scattered throughout the month. We made these cute turkeys out of construction paper, toilet paper rolls, and eyes. Peter used black buttons on his and told everyone that his turkey was blind. I guess that's not a bad affliction to have if you are going to be devoured on Thanksgiving.

These cute turkeys came to us a few weeks later. We gathered the pine cones from the park at the city center and transformed them using construction paper. I typically use colored tissue paper, but I couldn't seem to find my stash of it this year. I think the boys must have got into it and in frustration I threw it all out. Next year I'll need to buy more because it works so much better with tissue paper.

Finally, on Thanksgiving morning, I got out all the things I needed to make these cute paper bag puppets. The boys were off playing and didn't want to be disturbed, so I created them by myself. Perhaps next year I'll make a set of Native Americans to go with them. I personally love how they turned out - not entirely perfect, but perfect enough for me.