Thanksgiving 2010

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday with our good friends, Bill and Jocelyn. We're usually traveling to Mississippi to see Peter's family at this time of year. We decided against the road trip due to the lateness of my pregnancy, so we were so glad to be invited to enjoy the celebration with our friends.

Cecily quickly discovered where to find some food.

Hmm....those olives look good.

Can I, Mom?

Jocelyn is preparing the gravy while Bill is carving the turkey.

The tables were all set up and ready when we arrived. The kids are watching a photo slideshow on the computer.

Everything looked so pretty. The eldest daughters made many of the decorations and set it all up.

Amelia is watching Sarah Grace roll up the crescent rolls.

Peter with baby Caleb.

Ben and his good buddy, William. These two are fun to get together. I think they do have a special bond. They have just the same birthday on the same year.

Calvin and Samuel.

Baby Caleb is always an attraction for Cecily.

Amelia and Katrina are having a tea party with their babies.

Still waiting for the food to be all done. :)

Now it's time. Since Bill and Jocelyn have 7 children, there were 13 children and 4 adults at this meal. Hugely outnumbered by the little people!

Ben and Cal with their thanksgiving meal.

Caleb gets the drumstick. :)

13 kids watching Polar Express after the meal. :) A very fun, thankful day. Actually, it was a wonderful day. It was so nice to have a holiday, so great to be with good friends who we truly are so thankful for. And of course, the food was very good. :)

Food

I had a few pictures of food from the past couple of weeks. I haven't taken pictures of much else, so this is what I'm posting. :)

Amelia and I worked together to make an apple-cranberry pie a couple of Saturdays ago.

We sure had fun!

This was our first chicken to roast of our free-range chickens that we helped to grow at the Oldlands' (OK, Peter helped butcher the chickens and that's about it).

I made some chicken fried rice and egg rolls a couple of weeks ago too. Maybe it was my pregnancy tastebuds, but man, was it good.

Today is Wednesday before Thanksgiving. So, today is a cooking day too. Time for me to get off the blog and go make my pies. I hope you all have a marvelous and blessed Thanksgiving holiday and I will be back to probably post more food photos after it's all over. :)

Impromptu Tea Party

A couple of nights ago I was talking on the phone with my mom while I was cooking dinner. Meanwhile the girls had "dresssed up" and set up a little tea party with water. I took these pictures so mom could "see" a bit of the tea party that was going on while we were talking. :)

Amelia is getting to be a good little hostess when she wants to be. Most of Cecily's "dressing up" came off by the time they were at the table. :) She had a hat, shoes and a muff, but didn't hold onto them long.

Pumpkins

Here's a series of photos of the pumpkin-carving time this year. I just stepped out in the garage long enough to take these pictures. I didn't actually help out with the gooey mess this year. :)

Hurray for Millie's pumpkin!

So pleased and excited when they're through.

They're pleased too. They carved the faces themselves.

6 little grinning pumpkins.

Leaf Collecting

A few weeks back I took the kids to a nearby park to hike and collect some leaves to decorate the house. I used the opportunity to play with my camera, trying out different settings and taking lots of shots of the kids and things we saw. Here's the lengthy result: Heading out.

This is the view to the right of where we were walking in the above picture.

The foliage was a little early, but some of it was just right.

Hilly West Virginia. This park is on the edge of town. It has a beautiful view of the outlying hills.

Heading into the woods now.

I was trying out different settings on my camera. I found some that really helped to bring out the color of the trees.

Ben found a tree that grew the most enormous thorns.

Nicely camouflaged moth.

Running to catch up. :)

Looking at mushrooms.

Out in a clearing.

Calvin's very long stick.

Back to the pond.

Ben kind of blended in with the brown part of the woods. He kept hiding from us. In the end, he climbed this tree to say hi when we caught up with him.

Heading up the hill towards the parking lot.

We stopped to enjoy a gazebo.

We gazed at the clouds and discussed what shapes they looked like.

A very nice hike and morning together outside. Ready to head home for some lunch...