Once the Turkey Trot was rolled up and put away, this crew (plus some extras) split up and scuttled home to make all their food assignments for the big Thanksgiving dinner.
…and our family hustled home to make some semblance of order to the chaos we had left at home. The kids wrote up new Thankful leaves to add to the thankful tree:
On a side-note, when we first put up our tree this year, I sent Elle a pic. of a couple leaves Lucy made:
And she sent me right back a leaf she and Carson had just added to their own thankful tree:
Aw, makes my heart so happy this tradition continues to “grow roots.”
Anyway, back at home we got busy setting up these tables (we had moved all the furniture earlier).
Dave was his mom’s partner carving the turkey this year:
And I had helpers getting the tables all set:
Ok, gotta get a closer vantage point for those tables because they took some work…
There we go.
Filled right up with our favorite people:
…and such delicious food.
Then family photos as per tradition:
They are the biggest things I’m thankful for this year.
Do you think this baby is loved??
More than I can say.
Plus this one who is so far away:
Who is a hugger, by the way. Ha!
Then dessert:
Watching football, sitting by the fire:
…and puzzling into the night.
Much to Dave’s chagrin, we sang a round of happy birthday to him. Because, after all, it would be his birthday the next day.
(He’s not a huge fan of the attention…but man, we love him!)
Stayed up late to play cards with some of our favs., Jake and Rachel.
We had to cut into these beautiful pumpkins because the kids had seen some TikTok about using them for pumpkin pie and all kinds of baking.
Gosh, God is such an incredible artist.
We sent pre-birthday boy Dave to bed since he kept falling asleep in his chair after a pretty exhausting day, and got to work transforming our kitchen to be “birthday ready.” First off, the tree came down. Lucy was my willing poser to capture it before it got put away for a year:
Boo Hoo, always sad to say goodbye to Thanksgiving.
And the floors were swept, dishes done on repeat, birthday stuff was put up. And ten loads of laundry were done deep into the night.
And with that, we were ready for the next big day.
(with all our just-washed fabric napkins laid out to dry on the counters)
Reach to celebrate our favorite man, David Stuart.
It was a good (and very tiring) Thanksgiving for the books.
And I love that all that gratitude is seeping in even more as we near Christmas.
