Happy Thankgiving!

I had a fabulous holiday weekend – how about you?

Thursday: we slept in a little bit, since neither one of us had pressing things to do that morning. Eventually we wandered out into the living room and got our days started. Bryan made us some oatmeal for breakfast, then I made my Brussel Sprout Salad while he got the wood box filled up again. We go through a lot of firewood: Mother loves her heat almost as much as my kittens do.

About 12:30 we got the car all packed up with the three of us and all our gear and then headed on up the mountain to my niece’s house for Thanksgiving Dinner with the family. She had quite the spread laid out, with two large turkeys and ALL the fixings. Each family member brought yet more food, from salads to deserts to appetizers, so we were well fed. Katy’s new house has a balcony overlooking the living area, so we took advantage of that to take our Group Photo.

From left to right: Tabitha, Autumn, Heather, Kaylee, Reed Hank, Darren, Corbin, Kelly, Annalise (the baby), Laurel, Danny, Mother, Tara, Maurice (the Great Pyrenees ) Lisa, Ruth, Bryan, Noel, Willow (the Corgi), Katy, and Maddie (a Lab-Corgi mix)

After eating dinner at my niece’s house, Bryan and I then drove into Anchorage to eat yet another dinner at his cousin’s house! Chris and Terri had a much smaller dinner party (only 9 people) but we still had a good time. They have twins, Madison and Maverick, who are just the cutest little 6-year-olds. Their older son Robert (15) was there as well, but he spent most of his time in the back room on the computer, listening to his music.

Friday: was our regular flex day so neither one of us had to work that day either. We spent the day doing chores around the house and just generally relaxing. Bryan installed the new water machine to our kitchen sink while I cleaned our section of the house and played with the kittens. I made a few cards while I was at it using a new-to-me technique of cutting a bunch of skinny strips of paper and gluing them down onto the paper with the die cuts. As you can see, I used both the die cut and the negative left over. Both cards are pretty cool, I think.

Saturday: Heather and Tabi came over that afternoon to do an art project with me. I had seen a picture online of some Christmas Tree Ornaments made out of old Scrabble Tiles and figured it couldn’t be that difficult to make. We had fun with it, each of us making at least 5 or 6 ornaments. Tabitha invited us all out to ice cream afterwards, so we got to prolong our fun and have good home-made ice cream too!

Sunday: Mother and I drove into Wasilla to do some Christmas shopping that afternoon. She had picked out several flyers from that morning’s newspaper listing all the sales going on, so we took advantage of them and got most of our gifts taken care of. It was a fun outing: Mother enjoyed just sitting in the passenger seat and watching the views out the window.