Our Thanksgiving

Isn't Thanksgiving a great holiday? I enjoyed it this year so much, just being able to spend the time with family. The last couple of years, we have been at Northland for Thanksgiving. We were always so blessed by the families at Northland that 'adopted' us when we were away from our families over holidays like that, but it was such a blessing to be back with our real families this year! :)

Thanksgiving morning, Jordan and Grant took Macy and Boomer (Grant's yellow lab) out pheasant hunting. Macy learned a lot about hunting this past weekend, since Jordan took her out all four days! One afternoon, Jordan and Grant went out in the backyard to sight in their guns for deer season and they left Macy in the house. Every time a gun shot went off, she rushed to the door and whined. She was sure she was missing out on a hunt! When we finally let her out, she combed the backyard trying to find the birds she thought the guys had shot. (They were only shooting at targets, though.)

Jordan with Macy and TWO of the pheasants from Thanksgiving morning ;)

We girls helped Mom Horak with the Thanksgiving dinner preparations. We had to set the table for 19 people!

Anna showing the l-o-n-g full table :)

We were the potato-peeling/cutting crew for the mashed potatoes

While we were doing the 'woman-work' the boys were doing 'man-work' (...something with the pheasant and eventually they brought in a dish of meat...)

Everyone started arriving and it was fun to see the aunts and uncles and cousins again! The house was full and busy!

Aunt Barb and Aunt Danielle chatting in the kitchen

Later in the afternoon, Jason and Julia and Kaden showed up! Jason brought his gun along, so the boys went out to test their skills at target shooting. :) I'm so glad that Jason and Julia live close by so we can see them so often! We had a lot of fun playing with Kaden and making him laugh! He was cracking us up the way he would have a good belly-laugh every time he got to knock over one of the stacks of dice from the game that was sitting out on the table! I got it on video...SO ADORABLE!

This video is a minute and 22 seconds long:

Kaden's belly-laughing
Julia & I with Kaden
Kaden and I

We had so much fun shopping together! We all tried on things, but Andria was the only one who really hit the jack-pot finding a few things to buy! By the end, we were getting so tired and hungry so we stopped at Culver's for a little pick-me-up. We ordered a medium Reeses' Peanut Butter Cup Concrete Mixer with three spoons, and we greatly enjoyed it until we hit the half-way point. Then, there was no candy left! Just frozen vanilla custard! So, I took it back up to the counter and they actually made us a whole new full-to-overflowing medium Concrete Mixer...with plenty of candy throughout! ;) Mmmmm.... When we got home we had some pizza and watched "No Reservations." Good girl times! :)

The shopping crew

On Sunday, we woke up to a white world covered with a thick layer of snow!! Of course, that made for a presto-Christmas-mood, so when we got back from church we dragged out the tree and ornaments and turned on the old Christmas songs and got busy! We even made some brownies to get the house smelling Christmas-y! :)

Andria and I getting the tree put up
Picking out which ornaments to put on the tree
Andria found her Santa-hat, so we took a picture! Heehee!

Anna was there helping too, I'm not sure why I didn't get any pictures of her decorating the tree! Bummer! Guess I'll blame it on the photographer! Just kidding! Haha! ;)

Around 4pm on Sunday, we headed out to Jason and Julia's to see the rest of my family before going on home. They had all planned to stop there before going on their separate ways home from Grandma's house. I was so happy we got to see them...it seemed like I hadn't seen Julie and Jess for a long time!

Jordan & Kaden
My exceedingly adorable 11-month-old nephew
Kaden and Julia

Well, if you actually read all the way to the end of this long post, I must say that I'm pretty impressed with your level of perseverance! Of course, this was the shortened and somewhat edited version of all that happened over our Thanksgiving weekend. ;) I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!