What a memorable and wonderful Thanksgiving we had at our house this year! My parents and brother were able to join us for the week, and we couldn't of been more blessed by the presence of family for Thanksgiving this year. I loved cooking by my mom's side, gleaning tips from the pro! Thanks to our good friends from church, we had enough firewood collected from their property to fuel an ongoing fire every moment we were home! I was SO thankful for this since last year, John refused to pay any money for firewood, since he had also grown up cutting his own! I don't blame him, but boy, am I thankful we have a stack in our garage now! It's incredible the difference it makes in our all hard-wood-floor house as the temperatures continue to drop. Though it wasn't quite cold enough for snow yet, we did have every other kind of weather imaginable, from beautiful sunny days to windy, cold and rainy ones...they definitely got a feel for the way weather changes around here all the time :) Snow is in the forecast in the next couple weeks... just missed it!
I'll let pictures from my Dad's camera (and some from mine) share the rest of the story...
Gramma and Gramps visit Ryder's pre-school Monday afternoon
Ryder with his pre-school buddies
Thanksgiving Feast at Cole's school Tuesday morning
Having fun at home...
What's a visit with Uncle D without wrestling?
Gramps and all 3 grandkids!
On a walk through our neighborhood to the park...
Thanksgiving Day!
Meet...our 25 pound Turkey
John's 1st carving!
About to dig in!!!
Yum, yum!
On Friday morning, Advanced Bionics (the company that made Cole's cochlear implants) sent a photographer to our house to capture Cole enjoying family moments with 3 generations. Hopefully I'll have more pictures to share with you in the future, from Gilles, the professional photographer, but until then, here are some in between moments I captured of some of us hanging around while Gilles followed Cole around the house, taking pictures of him playing in other rooms. It was actually a really natural and fun experience, but it's always a little funny getting used to someone snapping pictures of you being "normal." :) It was fun getting to know Gilles better who was originally from the Southern part of France but had lived in L.A. for the past 15 years. We had a lot to talk about! We think he got some great pictures, in our house, outside at the park, on the bridge over the creek at the Lake under a willow tree, and many more. Hopefully I'll be able to share some of these with you soon! Until then, here are some from my camera!
I'll leave you with my oldest boy being....himself. He seems to get REAL silly when other people are around. It may be because we're all laughing at him most of the time! At dinner one night he said something, it was siklent afterward and he said, "I thought you were going to laugh, because that was SO funny!" He knows how to please a crowd!
To say we are thankful hardly seems to do justice to the incredible gratitude we feel toward God for our family. We LOVED having my parents and brother here and praise God for bringing our family together for such a memorable week together. What precious moments we will treasure forever! Thank you, Mom and Dad, and Derek for spending the week in our neck of the woods...we already miss you and are counting the days until we're together again!
Sounds and looks like you ugys had a great week. I'm glad you were able to spend it with family.
WONDERFUL! Great pics, Danice!
What fun pictures. I'm so glad your family could be there for Thanksgiving.