Thanksgiving

Gabe made the classic Indian outfit in preschool.  My heart skipped a beat when he came out of school wearing this.   It is the classic little kid/Indian outfit that looks so cute in a collage when they grow up and get married.  His teacher even said he cut the frays on the bottom and was the only child to do that.  I don't know how he thought of it but it looked fabulous!

We had a fun visit with Richard and Salli who came out for the week of Thanksgiving.  This was the least blurry picture.  I don't know why the camera was struggling.

  Marcia found this 'Eat like a Pilgrim' dinner at Thanksgiving point which turned out to be so authentic and memorable.  The food was plopped onto your plate out of a metal bucket by pilgrims.  It was held in the big barn and hosted by some people that really get into dressing up and acting like pilgrims in their spare time.  They had everyone stand and hold hands to say grace before they started serving.

Sophie and Sadie.  They also had displays, games, live animals and gun demonstrations.

Here is Gabe totally getting into this with his pewter dishes and napkin wrapped like the pilgrim men instructed him.

 This guy explained to us that there is currently a dispute amongst the 'reinactors' as to how events are held and when to charge for admission etc.  Who knew there were so many people into this?

 Ethan loved locking himself or siblings into the gallows at least a dozen times.  Going to this dinner was a lot of fun but mostly it filled me with gratitude for those first pilgrims that sacrificed so much and worked so hard to settle this country.  They were God-fearing, faithful people.  I would love to learn more about our own ancestors that came to America in some of those first years!  My dad says we have one that came on the Mayflower, I need to research that more.

Then, a couple days later, we had the actual Thanksgiving feast up at Mark and Elizabeth's.  I originally had a goal to run in our city turkey trot 5k but didn't end up training in time and the weather was less than 20 degrees so I didn't feel too bad.  Here's one of the kids tables.

 Marcia's beautimous turkey.

Then the kids made a real rat maze so we all went to watch the rat find it's way through- pretty cool.

And here is the sweetest part of the day.... cousins.  Taylor must have snapped this in the basement before dinner.  Such cute little boys!