Tuesday, December 14, 2010

New Traditions


Ok, I haven't blogged in like 10 years, but I am going to try before motherly duties call me elsewhere. As you know I birthed my 4th and final child on July 8th this year. Our house is crazy and chaotic but I LOVE it! When it gets hard, I just think forward 15-20 years from now when my house will be full at thanksgiving of all my kids and grandkids. (In these dreams I'm still in my 20's somehow.)


Anyways this Thanksgiving, Aaron and I decided to stay at home and just enjoy our family. Normally we run all over Washington County trying to please all our families and it takes a toll on us and our kids. We are completely exhausted from hauling kids everywhere and trying to keep them from getting in trouble. We never just get to enjoy a holiday. We invited all our families to come to our house if they wanted to and Chloe and I started preparing our menu. I was so excited to make new traditions with our kids! Chloe had such a blast helping me cook, and she did such a great job. We made a turkey of course, mashed potatoes and our first attempt at real gravy (it was delicious, I found a great recipe), green beans with onions and bacon, sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie with real whipped cream. We did good. Hopefully next year Stella can help us out too. I love the thought of having these little partners in my kitchen for years to come.
Aaron and I thought long and hard about what we wanted our ideal Thanksgiving to look like. We knew we wanted to teach the kids that we have so much to be thankful for, we wanted it to be fun and we wanted to exercise after we ate. So before we ate, we all went around the table and shared what we were thankful for this year. It was so precious to hear their little thoughts! After dinner we went out to the new Banks trail head and walked for an hour, racing each other and looking for animals. It was really refreshing and we felt so much better about ourselves afterwards. Finally we went home and made turkeys our of lunch sacks. This was a project I did back in 2nd grade and loved. The kids did such a great job and were very creative. Peyton went above and beyond and made a beak and all sorts of extras.

The only visitors we had were my Gramma Peggy and her husband Jim. They brought presents for the kids and visited for a while. They were tired though from their long day of visiting family. It was nice to NOT be tired on a Thanksgiving evening!