Thanksgiving - with a surprise ending

We started the day with the "2nd Annual Jefferson Turkey Trot" with about 5 other families in our neighborhood. Isaac came in first place - he's a fast one - then I won for the adults (because I was the only adult not carrying or urging a small child along - or pushing a stroller - but hey, I'll take a win where I can get it).

Here are the Turkey Trot participants (minus a kid or two - somehow standing still for photos isn't a favorite thing for lots of kids...)

Then we headed to Park City for our Thanksgiving feast with my mom, her sister, and a bunch of my cousins and their kids along with the cute couple and their two little girls who live near my parents and help them with keeping their place up. The table was gorgeous. The dinner was super tasty. My mom sure knows how to do up Thanksgiving right. It was fun to do the final cooking and prepping with my mom and my Aunt Lena and to have great time with my cousins while our kids played so happily together. As well as stuffing ourselves with wonderful food, we sang around the piano and talked and shared the things we're most grateful for in our lives right now.

Eliza got up early on Thanksgiving and started her list of things she's thankful for, determined to be this year's thankful champion. She had 300 things on her list before we even woke up. Then in the car on the way to Park City, she got another 200 things on her list while the rest of the family worked on their lists. We ended up with a combined total of over 1100 things listed by the time we got to Park City. And while Liza won the title of thankful champion, making lists make us all pretty darn happy and the kids were really excited to show their lists to Grandfather and Grammie when we arrived at their house (since they're the inventors of this thankful thing list idea from way back when I was little).

Eliza was pretty proud of her list - and I loved the glimpse into her brain that it offered me...

Jared was in charge of the potatoes. Wow, he makes some amazingly tasty potatoes. My dad was his trusty assistant. (And Jared's doing No Shave November. Quite a beard, huh?)

Pretty table, huh? My mom always makes things look so nice.

  
My kids in their matching Thanksgiving clothes (some were more thrilled about the idea than others - but I thought the twins' sweaters were pretty darn cute and couldn't pass them up when they were 50% off and figured we might as well all dress in brown and orange...)

The kids' table:

Ashton got to join the adult table this year (and ate more than any of the adults)

The adult table:



Yummy pie

Singing around the piano (fun to see our kids sing together at a family gathering since my Grandma used to always have us - their moms - come sing together at family gatherings at her house). My mom and Aunt Lena also played a bunch of beautiful Christmas carols for us - mom on violin, Lena on piano - took me back to my childhood - and tales of their childhood.

We finished off the day at Jared's brother's house with his great family and Jared's mom where we somehow crammed a little more pie into our bellies while laughing and talking about the latest in everyone's lives (should have remembered to take a photo - oops!). I am so blessed to be related to so many wonderful people!

So the day was all well and good until Ashton was suddenly violently throwing up all over the car on the way home - it came on so suddenly we didn't even have a chance to pull over. Wow was that a nasty clean up in the freezing cold on the shoulder of the freeway with Ashton continuing to throw up over the guardrail of the overpass we were on. When we did our "top 10" lists of what we're thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner, one of my cousins who has little babies had "wet wipes" on her top 10 lists. Jared and I decided wet wipes were definitely on our top 10 list as well as we used an entire container trying to get Ashton and the car in decent enough shape to drive the rest of the way home!

Today was all about sick kids (Ashton was still sick and the twins have low-grade fevers and say their eyes are hurting and keep coughing - sort of a weird sickness) and Jared finally finishing the backyard fence with Isaac's help (it's done - yeah!). Jared and I also did a bit of shopping together (Jared has somehow worn holes in the bottoms of ALL his shoes..and we got a few fun Christmas gifts to get ahead of things - found some excellent deals on a few little things for the kids while marveling at the craziness of Black Friday...).