We celebrated a lovely Thanksgiving with our friends, the Wests. This was our third annual Thanksgiving with their wonderful family. They are Shaun's friends from high school with two girls close in ages to our own, and they've lived in North Carolina now for the last three to four years. We were in hopes this would continue for years to come as a fantastic Thanksgiving tradition (we rotate going to their place and them coming to us so every other year you get to be the "guest" at Thanksgiving= less stress = nice). But alas, they will most likely be headed back west next year as will some of our other wonderful North Carolina friends. So it was sad knowing our third annual Thanksgiving with them would be our last... at least for a while, but we still had a great time.
Wednesday we visited Montpieler, Mr. James Madison's home, and had a lovely time.
James and Dolly's view from their front door... Virginia at its finest!
We visited with the horses on site there. Ella was a little scared a first.
And a tour through The Madison's gardens. Ella's leading the way!
A kiss in the garden
Then Thursday we had a wonderful feast. Thank goodness Tawnie was here to help with the turkey... and when I say "help" I mean she mostly did it single handedly as I am a royal mess in the kitchen. We had some wonderful pies, some store bought, some home made. And we enjoyed left overs for the week to come.
Friday the Wests braved the stores on black friday and Shaun and I met up with them that afternoon to enjoy Ella's first movie in the theaters, "Tangled." She was excellent during the movie much to our delight and we enjoyed a whole movie with very little interruption. Amelia was even good and slept through most of it. On our way home from the movie we picked up our Christmas tree and put it up that evening (pics soon to come).
Saturday we went to the Christmas tree lighting in Gainesville and Ella got to waive to Santa. Here are Tawnie and Ellie in front of the tree.
And of course the boys with their little girls.
Mostly we just enjoyed visiting with them and staying up playing games after we put the girls to bed (although I pooped out on them a couple of times because I was just too tired). Saturday night was nice though because we also got to visit with our friends, The Fords, while they were in town. I'm so richly blessed with wonderful friends.
Ella and Ellie play very well together and Ella's been talking about her non-stop since she left.
We hope our friends and family enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving as well wherever you were and whoever you got to spend it with. Thanks to Adam, Tawnie, and their girls for making our Turkey day one for the books! I took some photos of them and hopefully they liked them. I thought the one above turned out really nicely.
We are now excited that the Holiday Season has settled in upon us and look forward to a wonderful December, a time to celebrate family, love, and the precious gift of our Savior's birth, life, and atoning sacrifice. I'm so grateful for his redeeming love. I'm so grateful for his humble birth. I'm so grateful that this is a season that encourages me to reflect more on that sacrifice and remember gratitude for all of the blessings that come to me through his love.
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