Our packed weekend!

Okay as I promised, here is the post from our Thanksgiving and weekend. If I was to give an overall summery, I would have to say it was packed, fun, rewarding, and a great Thanksgiving weekend.

For Thanksgiving we went to my Aunt's and Uncle's home in Walker. My two cousins also came with their spouses and kids and my Grandma was there as well. The food was great and there was such a huge amount of desserts it was almost unbelievable. Let's see there was pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, fudge, pumpkin bars, pumpkin roll, 2 kinds of turkey cookies....okay I have to stop now I'm starting to crave sweets......you get the idea.

Mom's sweet potato pie. It's a lot like pumpkin pie.

Mom and Grandma helping clean the dishes after our big meal.


Grandma sat outside and watch the rest of us play. My cousin Kathy wrapped her up in two special outdoor blankets so she was nice and warm even with the wind. We teased her that she looked like a little Bohemian woman and she was so cute I just had to take this shot.

It's tradition on this side of the family that we play a game of kickball. It's really a blast since most of us are pretty competitive. Yes, we play by farm rules.

On the way out we were taking our 4-wheelers with us when the tire on the wagon went flat. We had to leave it at someone house in the country. That night Dad and Andrew tried to change the tire on the way home but they couldn't get the bolts or whatever they're called off. Andrew and I ended up riding the 4-wheelers over to a friends house and leaving them there while Mom and Dad limped the wagon home. It was an adventure and fun to drive on the gravel roads at night and in the cold.

Friday morning we got up at 5:30 am so that we could be to our church at 6:30 to go to Oakville, IA where our church was doing an outreach. Oakville was flooded really bad this year and their little town still needs a lot of help. There were around 50 people who went down and helped Friday and Saturday.

This is a pic of Carolyn (a lady from our church who's home was also flooding this year), Tom our leader and missions staff at our church, and me. You may be asking what was with the white suits? Well, Carolyn and I were assigned to power wash the river dirt out of the inside of a house. Needless to say it was a very time consuming and dirty job but we also managed to have a blast as well.

At the very end, I plopped down on the floor and blew the back of my tyvek suit out! Oops! We had a good laugh over that one as well.

Sunday, after we got back from out full trip we slept in and went to second service. Since we hadn't gotten the Christmas decorations up yet, we decided to work on it. I think that we have most of them up but we're still not quit done.

Yes, we have an artificial tree, all you real tree people. I personally like this tree quite a bit and I'm partial to artificial since that's what I've grown up with. I really think there are a whole politics about whether to go artificial or real but I won't go into that now.

Here is my brother and father setting up our super easy, pre-lit, fold down branches, Christmas tree.

Mom and Andrew being goofy while I try and get a good pic of them.

I seemed to have the dropsy's yesterday and I managed to break two bulbs :( This pic. is after the first one. I wasn't too happy with myself after the second one.

So this is it. Now you have a taste of what my life has been like since Thanksgiving. I hope that yours was good and your weekend as well. Leave me your thought when you get a chance.