Thanksgiving and Early December

Since I have completely neglected my blog for such a long time, I have a lot of pictures to post! I have so many, in fact, that I am publishing two posts in one day. A record for sure. :)

Here are some pictures documenting our Thanksgiving and a few other things (everything is completely out of order...sorry!):

We attended the annual Christmas Creche Festival last night and it was amazing, as usual. There was an incredibly large variety of nativity scenes from all around the world displayed in the cultural hall of our church. I loved looking at each and every one of them! And throughout the evening (and the rest of the weekend), a variety of musical performers from around the community come and perform special Christmas musical selections to help the people in attendance feel the true meaning of Christmas.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think, Jon and I played 4 piano duets. We played "What Child is This", "Jeanette Isabella", "Silent Night", and "O Come O Come Emmanuel". When we practiced the pieces at home, they sounded pretty good. But leave it to me to make a zillion mistakes during the actual performance! :) I don't know what my problem is, but when I have to play in front of people, the notes on the page have a tendency to melt together and all that I see is a big blur! :) Oh well. It has been a lot of fun learning those pieces with my husband.

Anyway, at the Creche Festival, there is a special little Children's room set up where the kids can do a variety of Nativity focused activities. They had a bunch of dress-up clothes and I wanted to get a cute picture of Lizzie and Bryce...but it didn't quite worked out the way that I had planned. It's a good thing that my kids are cute no matter how well they pose! ;)

Here are the pictures that I was able to get:

Lizzie decorated this gingerbread man by herself (with a little help from me placing the frosting where she wanted it to go). It looks like a gingerbread ALIEN!

Random pictures of Lizzie:

We put up our Christmas decorations the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This is what Bryce looked like near the end of the decorating:

Lizzie loved helping out with the tree this year!

I felt so bad for Lizzie! She wanted to decorate this little tree all by herself. Every time that she was almost done, Bryce would come and knock it down! Needless to say, I ended up just taking the tree down and putting it back in the garage. It can come up next year when Bryce isn't so destructive!

Both of the kids loved discovering the Christmas toys that we get out only during the Christmas season (our Christmas Ducks, the stacking Santa's, Christmas books, Christmas stuffed animals, Christmas boxes, etc.).

Okay, on to Thanksgiving. We hosted the dinner at our house again this year and I think that it went really well. The only thing missing was my family. I missed them an awful lot! But aside from missing my family, it went really well! Everyone that came brought a dish or two (or three) and there was so much food that we ate like kings!

Jon wanted to give a shot at smoking the turkey this year. And I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that it was the absolute best turkey that I have ever tasted in my life! (No offense, Dad!). It had the best smoked flavor! It. Was. Delicious.

He stayed by the grill the majority of the day making sure that the coals were still burning and that the temperature was still ideal. Actually, the entire process of smoking the Turkey began at 4:30 in the morning! While Jon was getting the smoker ready, I cleaned the turkeys and injected them with seasoning. It was an early start, but definitely well worth it!

Am I lucky, or what? :)

I contributed to the meal by making homemade crescent rolls (which turned out pretty yummy), and homemade wheat rolls (which usually taste great, but this time they tasted and felt like pieces of whole wheat brick).

I also made mini-cheesecakes, which turned out pretty well. Actually, I ended up eating most of them single-handedly. Not a good thing at all!

Here is the set up. We borrowed tables and chairs from the church which made hosting the meal very convenient!

Here are the people. There were a lot!

After the dinner had been cleaned up, Jon's Dad and Brother Manry played with Bryce's little Lightning MacQueen for about 30 minutes straight. It's the kind of car that you shake and then it goes. They kept shaking it and letting it go to see if they could get the car to go all the way across the table without falling off! It was pretty entertaining! Lizzie loved it, at least.

Thanksgiving afternoon, before we ate dinner, Jon was eating and sharing a popsicle with Bryce. Bryce LOVES to eat anything that Jon is eating. It's comical, really. He runs to his Daddy whenever he hears a wrapper opening up, or even if he suspects in the slightest that any type of food is being consumed. So, naturally, he tried this popsicle that Jon was eating. Apparently it was a little too cold for his liking!

He finally utterly refused to try it any longer! It was so funny!

Bryce has a habit of putting peoples shoes on his hands and walking around.

He also loves wearing the potato head glasses on his own head! I just love this boy to pieces!

And I love this little girl just as much. She is such a character!

It was a great Thanksgiving! We are truly blessed.