Thanksgiving 2012

 I know, it's a little late. It's practically Christmas and here I am just getting around to blogging about Thanksgiving. And I know, this is the longest break I've taken from the blog since I began it in February 2008! Why the break? Not really sure. Nothing is new around here (no, I'm not pregnant if you thought that perhaps morning sickness was keeping me away :). Although things are a bit busier around here because of the holidays, that isn't really what kept me from blogging. To be honest, I think I just got a bit tired of it. It's hard to keep it up, partly because it just takes so much time and partly because comments have lagged so much over the past year or so. Many of you tell me that you regularly read my blog, but it's easy to forget that when I keep getting zero comments on many of my posts (that NEVER happened when I first started this!). And then when I did finally decide to put of the pictures from Thanksgiving, I got a message saying I'd actually have to start paying MONEY because I'd reached the size limit for blogger! Well, that just kind of turned me off and I put it out of my mind for awhile (the fee is quite nominal, but, still, it's the principle of the thing! ;).

But when I got a text from a friend tonight asking me if I was going to quit my blog, I decided I better make it my priority and get it done pronto! And now we have some catching up to do. :)

Thanksgiving Day was spent with Kevin's parents at their house out on the coast. We were a smaller group this year, as Kevin's brother's in-laws were in town so his family did not join us. But we still had a lovely time together - eating, playing games (it's so fun now that Abby and Ben are old enough to play a few games now!), decorating gingerbread men, snuggling and watching football.

 We got home pretty late, tucked the kids into bed and then I headed out to do a little Black Friday shopping. At first, I didn't quite know what to think about stores opening up Thursday evening, but I decided that I rather liked it. Being a night owl, I was much more happy to shop until 1am and then climb into my bed for the rest of the night rather than awake at 4am as I had for many years past. Abby and I did go out to a couple stores right after breakfast (can't pass up those half-price socks at Fred Meyer along with the free donuts and juice, right? :) and I couldn't help but smile at how excited Abby was to be shopping with me on the "busiest shopping day of the year." She was the perfect little shopping companion. :)

The next day, the Gardner family came over to our house and we had a very nice time together. We did things a bit different this year and had several different casseroles using leftover turkey from Thursday. It worked out well, but we might go back to a ham dinner next year. I enjoyed decorating and using my china again (can I confess that I didn't put up our Thanksgiving decorations until the day AFTER Thanksgiving? Ha!). The little cousins had tons of fun playing together all day long and we adults even fit in some fun games too. For those reading this that went to youth group with me, you would have enjoyed our rousing game of three-on-a-couch with the sticker-team versus the non-sticker team (hence the bright green stickers on Kevin and my Aunt Doris in the picture below :).

And that was our Thanksgiving weekend. I'll try not to take such a long break until my next post.

P.S. Thanks, Rachel, for the motivation for this post. :)