Gobble Gobble

We started off the Thanksgiving holiday with Tyler getting in a little turkey bowl time while me, Owen and Collette took a bike ride (YAY! Finally got a bike trailer for the kids so we can go biking and running together again!) and prepped the house for Thanksgiving dinner.

This year we got together with four other couples. Since there were going to be 17 people in total, we decided to be super classy with our Thanksgiving decorations. We took some church tables, used some dollar store plastic table cloths (I have a $30 credit at my local dollar store. Who knew you couldn't return items to the dollar store, you could only get credit? Not me.)

Since I had one round tablecloth and one rectangle shaped tablecloth, we had to get creative to make sure we had tablecloth covering the whole table.

Should we pause here a moment to talk about my socks? This is what I look like when I mop my floors. Mismatched socks. Don't judge me.

I also got dollar store plates, cups and silverware and for decoration, we threw in the oreo cookie turkeys that Owen helped me make that morning.

 Owen helping but mostly eating all the peices of the oreo turkey. That's what happens when you make crafts with a two year old.

  I grew up with a tradition that I have tried to incorporate into our little family. It is called a Thankful box. You put it out at the beginning of November and whenever you feel thankful for something, you put it in the box. Then on Thanksgiving, right before you eat, you read everything in the box. Owen and I made our Thankful box at the beginning of the month and he and I would put thankful messages in it every few days. When our Thanksgiving company arrived, I explained to them that I would love for each of them to put something in the box as well so we could see what everyone else was thankful for. I also needed to remind Tyler to put something in there since he had passed it by each day without a glance this month. After the prayer I pulled out the Thankful box and started reading them. I soon noticed that nobody else had contributed to the box so I put it away and told everyone we should probably just go around the table and say what we were thankful for instead. I'm going to go ahead all call my friends out here... they all acted like this was something they had never heard of doing before. Is this not a Thanksgiving tradition? Come on people! Anyway, after the initial awkwardness of me forcing people to talk about what they were thankful for, the dinner was a success. Tyler had smoked a turkey for us and everything that everyone else brought was AMAZING. I love Thanksgiving. Yumm.

I'm sure you are all wondering what we had in our Thankful box right? Owen was thankful for pumpkins and crocodiles and his friends. Tyler was thankful for the thankful box and his hot wife (his words, not mine), his kids and great friends.  

And me... I'm so Thankful for Tyler. Even though Ty's work takes him away from us a lot, I am so grateful that he is such a hard worker and that he does so much for our family.  I'm so thankful for our kids and the amazing little people that they are. Lastly this year, I'm so thankful to have friends here who feel like family. Even though we couldn't be with family this year for the holiday, it was so great to have fantastic friends around to spend it with.

Happy Thanksgiving!