Thanksgiving

 

 We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. (Natalie and I kept talking about how excited we were for her first American Thanksgiving not in the hospital!) The kids made these turkeys to show everyone's places last year, but I was in the hospital by the time they did it, so they used the wrong glue and they didn't turn out as hoped, so we made new ones this year. The kids were thrilled to use the hot glue gun! 

We were in charge of making pies, and the kids were very excited to help. I was lazy and bought store-made pie crust, but we made a batch of homemade pie crust to make little fall cut-outs to decorate the edges with. Heidi was so excited about this task, that she used up all the extra to make cinnamon-sugar crust pieces that Trevor could have since all the pies had milk or nuts in them. (We also made him pumpkin cookies).

 The younger three, but especially Heidi, were thrilled to set the table and decide where everyone would sit. 

Trevor was excited to help Grandma make cranberry sauce just before dinner started. 

After dinner, Grandma got all the kids their own gingerbread house to make. They all had fun working with each other and being silly together. Amanda, Heidi, and Ben were pretty serious about doing their best work while the other kids were a bit silly. Leif always has interesting ideas, but gets very silly around his cousins and decided to make the ugliest house he could. Near the end one of the kids had the idea to drill a hole using scissors into the houses and the vast majority of the gingerbread houses ended up with a hole or two in them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 It was a very pleasant and pretty low-key dinner and the kids had a great time afterwards.