Thanksgiving and Advent

Thanksgiving 2011

We had a full house for Thanksgiving.  Our largest crowd yet of 19 people.  I got to use my new oven and kitchen sink faucet for the occasion -they are early Christmas presents of mine :).  I made the little kids pilgrim outfits along with their own felt version of Thanksgiving dinner.  I was able to finish sewing 4 of out our 5 new Christmas stockings while the week leading up to Thanksgiving every one in the family was sick as a dog except ironically me, the one who still has low white blood cells.  How is that possible?  We had lots of good food.  We are very thankful that our Import store imports turkeys from America for the occasion.  I cooked a 15+lb and my friend also cooked a 13lb turkey.  We had rolls, cornbread stuffing, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli cheese casserole, green bean casserole along with chocolate cheese cake, apple pie and pumpkin pie. 

 We managed to get most of our Christmas decorations up on Saturday before we hosted again on Sunday morning.  And we were able to start our family tradition of Advent.  I am really looking forward to this year as we take each night from Sunday until Christmas to teach the kids the story of Jesus' birth.  We also sing together and pray for others to know Jesus.  Four years ago we hung pictures of unreached people groups on our Christmas tree and would take one each night and pray for them.  This year each kid picked one and we are focusing on those three people groups for the entire month.   We want the focus of this season to not be on getting presents ourselves but we want to teach the kids how we can pray and give to others.  I think I am going to find/make boxes to represent the gifts we are going to be giving to their unreached people groups.  We will also participate in helping our local friends this Christmas as well. 

(pictures to come... the Internet is not wanting to load them right now. :)