Thanksgiving with Friends

We had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner with friends today. It was a grew time to be relaxed and enjoy each other. We ate at the Talbots home with the Rittmillers as well. 

The kids enjoying their coloring pages. 

Daniel prepped some serious appetizers for us! 

Macklin and Macy worked on some name cards for the tables to go with the plates. 

So many things to be grateful for this season, and good friends are one of them! 

Stone Soup Lunch

Instead of a traditional Thanksgiving meal at Macklin's preschool, they had a Stone Soup meal. I have not personally read the Stone Soup stories, but it has been their focus book this month at school. It focuses on everyone contributing to provide a meal for travelers, which was originally started with a stone. The kids all picked an ingredient to put into the chicken noodle soup. And, yes, their soup did have a stone in it! 

Thanksgiving 2013 & Tree Cutting

Our Thanksgiving Day started by getting ready for Christmas! Funny how the two can merge so quickly. I love both holidays so much that I wish they were further apart so you could more fully enjoy each of them!

Since Justin is still recovering from his knee surgery (meniscus), Daniel and I took the kids out around Minturn to find out annual beauty! Daniel had a great system to share as he tied the tree to the chariot and pulled it back to the truck. Macy took a little snooze as we searched and Macklin was a great helper! 

 

We have actually been preparing for Thanksgiving all month with our Thankful Tree. Now it is time for the big day! We enjoyed our meal with our good friend the Bangtsons in Minturn. They made the turkey and everyone else brought something yummy. I tried really hard to get a group picture, got everyone gathered, and then my camera was on the wrong settings. So, no group pic this time. We just enjoyed our meal. Our night ended with some awesome games and then off to Gypsum for everyone (except me, who crashed at their house and did Black Friday shopping the next day in Silverthorne!). 

Christmas here we come! 

Thankful Tree Tags

While there are still stories to share from the past couple of weeks, I wanted to show off our final list of Thankful Tree tags for 2013. Last year (below) was a bit more "mommy-guided." This year, I just let Macklin decide each day! If he talked to someone of saw a picture of a friend, they probably made the list. I will note that two forms of H2O made the tree before mommy ;) I think we will continue this tradition as it is a great intentional way to talk about thankfulness. 

Thankful Tree Tags

The tags are complete. Check out what Macklin was thankful for this November.