What do you get when 20 people cram into 1700 square feet for 3 days?
A WHOLE LOTTA FUN, THAT'S WHAT!
We were so excited to host Stephanie and Marcie's families this year at our house for Thanksgiving.
It was close quarters with every couch, mattress and inch of floor space used for sleeping,
but we had so much fun.
Marcie and Jason Francis pulled in at 7 a.m. Wednesday morning. The cousins wasted no time in organizing nail painting, games, talent show sign-ups and Thanksgiving play auditions. After napping, Marcie, Jason Francis and I made three pies, baklava, jell-O salad, candied walnuts and stuffing preparations.
We met the Soderborg's for dinner at Cafe Rio and Steph and True showed up there, too, soon after we arrived.
Thursday we had a busy but fun morning and afternoon preparing dinner. Lots of kids helped with chopping veggies, arranging cracker trays and assembling dishes.
The cousins rehearsed the Thanksgiving play and made maize cupcakes.
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| Delight, Zeal, Sterling, James, Weston, Ruth, Phebe, and Praise are frosting cupcakes and adding jelly-bellies to resemble Indian maize. |
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| All the jelly beans were consumed, but very few cupcakes. |
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To seat everyone for Thanksgiving dinner, we borrowed tables and chairs from the church and set them up in the living room. The kids' tables were covered in butcher paper and bowls of crayons set out so they could draw what they were thankful for. Annmarie provided place setting tags by making a word search with all of our names in it. The name of the person seated at that place was circled, but we had to search for everyone elses names.
Dinner was served in the kitchen buffet style and we all ate plenty!
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| We are so ready to eat! Someone, please bless it! |
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| A good lookin' bird! |
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| So much food! |
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| Karly and Delight |
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| Paige and Praise |
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| Zeal |
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| Weston is loving this holiday...James and food...doesn't get better! |
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| Sterling, James and Weston |
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| George |
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| Stephanie and True |
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| Jason and Marcie |
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| Jason, Shellie and Phebe |
After dinner we washed all of the dishes, made meringue for two pies, whipped the cream and prepared for the Struves to come at seven p.m.
The kids presented the first Thanksgiving play: Karly, Delight, Praise are pilgrims, Paige and Sterling are Native Americans, James is the narrator. That night the Redskins beat the Cowboys...how fitting for Thanksgiving!
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| Arriving in the Mayflower |
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| Huddling to stay warm through the first winter |
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| Meeting the Native neighbors for the first time |
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| A happy ending...a feast |
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Friday we took it easy in the morning. Jason took some family pictures of everyone that day. Annmarie also took some pictures and did a little Photoshop action to them.
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| Pre-photoshop action |
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| Post-photoshop action |
Friday night--and the whole wonderful visit capped off with a talent show. Unfortunately most of the pictures didn't turn out, but here's a brief summary of the performances:
Karly...backbend, George...reading a Thomas book, Paige...jumproping, Praise...recitation of poem, Delight...drawing on the ipad, James and Weston...light-saber skit, Sterling...touching tongue to nose, Jason Brown...juggling, Annmarie...piano piece.
We had so much fun and we're grateful to the Treanors and Francis' for making the long drive to be with us this year!
Happy Thanksgiving!
