This year for Thanksgiving, our Pucci came to town! She was here for the week leading up to Thanksgiving. We ate lots of ice cream… as we do when she comes to town. Apparently, they don’t have Blue Bell in New York. Also, we recently discovered a new BB flavor that combines my 2 favorites, cookies and cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. It’s heaven.
We were able to spend some time at Dad and Valerie’s house. He introduced the kids to Lost in Space.
Pucci went with us to Park Day with our homeschool group. She had fun playing with the kids.
The kids worked on making ornaments for our December service project. (We delivered them to a nursing home and sang Christmas carols as few weeks later.)
Our new Thanksgiving tradition is to host at our house. We started this last year and it worked out so well that we decided to do it again! Having Lauren in town was super helpful as I was trying to get the house ready. The day before, Spencer came to help too. Although his version of ‘helping’ was to sit at the piano and serenade us. It was actually lots of fun, haha.
Since everyone comes here, we divide up the Thanksgiving food so I don’t have to cook everything– it’s like a pot luck! My contribution is the turkey, Logan’s homemade cranberry sauce, Atticus’ deviled eggs, rolls, and I was supposed to make a dessert, but totally forgot. Whoops!
The night before, I was trying to set up the patio and decorate a bit. I was scrolling through Pinterest to get ideas and came across a really expensive piece from a Pottery Barn type store. I showed Chris and told him that we should book mark this to make next year– since it was the night before, I didn’t think there would be enough time to make it. He walked outside and came back 30 mins later with a homemade replica of the Pinterest decor. He went into the woods and found the perfect log and drilled holes large enough for tea lights. Then he added little legs on the bottom to keep it from rolling over. That’s true love, folks!
Lauren and I made a trip to Dollar Tree for some candles and glass jars and the rest of the decor we had around the house. Our Thanksgiving decorations this year cost me $9! I’m pretty proud of that. I even found some super cute printables online for napkin and silverware holders– and made everyone fill in what they were grateful for. Yes, I’m that person.
Seester love.
I don’t know jack about carving a turkey, so I make Dad do it. I’m always so worried that when he cuts into it the turkey is going to be like the turkey on Christmas Vacation. Needless to say, I’m lacking a little confidence in my turkey cooking abilities.
Oh man, that’s making me hungry….
After we ate, we took family photos!
Atticus was NOT digging photo time…
After our photos, we were all sitting around the bon fire. The kids were playing on their bikes and ride on toys in the drive way. Lorelei started to head towards the road and we told her to come back. Logan thought she might be in danger, so he went to help. He picked her up (around her waist with her facing out) and started to carry her towards where all the adults were sitting. As he was walking, he tripped and fell. Lorelei face planted onto the concrete and Logan landed on top of her. Chris and I immediately scooped her up and took her inside to assess the damage. She was bleeding everywhere. After I calmed down I remembered that our friend’s kiddo did something similar so I called her to talk it out. She gave me the contact info to the dentist that they worked with and low and behold, they had an emergency phone number to call. Would you believe that the dentist actually called me back (on a holiday!) and talked me through examining and photographing her mouth so he could get a better look. She busted her lip, tore her (very prominent) lip tie, and broke about 30% of her front tooth off. That amazing dentist called every single day the rest of Thanksgiving break to check on Lorelei– luckily, she didn’t have any sensitivity so we didn’t think she had damaged the root. We took her in for an x-ray and in person exam the following Monday and confirmed that the root was fine. Holy crap… what a traumatic experience!
We were (somehow) able to recover from The Great Faceplant of 2017 and went back to our festivities.
Chris and Spencer put on quite the show for everyone…