Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  We did.  It was just us :-)  We were invited, last minute, to join another family's celebration, but decided to just stick to home. Things have been a bit stressful over here and the thought of keeping track of my children in a house not familiar to me just didn't seem very fun/relaxing.  Not to mention all the food that would have been off limits to them.  We learned after last Sunday that it IS important to keep to the diet.  The children each had two meatballs at church fellowship.  Two meatballs from a bag.  That equals food coloring.  That then equals to four children totally out of control.  Big time!  I certainly did not want a repeat.  So we made our own feast right here at home, all GAPS legal.  And a feast it was!  We had roast chicken (we prefer chicken over turkey), "potatoes", "stuffing", cranberry sauce, squash casserole, deviled eggs and some amazing pumpkin pie.  This was very, VERY filling food.  Everyone took what they would normally take on their plate, but we filled up way before our plates were cleaned. I had made up a batch of vanilla yogurt to go over our pie.  It was delicious.

Thankfully I made sure to get a head start the day before.  This was good for a couple of reasons.  One being that a lot of these recipes were new to me, and that makes things go slower.  The other was that there was a lot to chop, cook, assemble.  But it all got done, in a relaxed manner.  All the kiddos helped out as well, making it go faster.  Below you can see some of our spread.   You'll also find some quick snapped pictures of us putting up our Christmas tree the following day.  Putting a fake tree together when you have 6 people helping really does make quick work!  When the kids were too little to help it would take Jeremiah and I forever to get it up.  For some reason we were short a string of lights, so a run to the store was in order.  Christmas music in the background, lights, ornaments and hot apple cider.  Oh fun!  The baby was amazed by all the sights.  He did a great job just hanging out and not getting into everything.  That's a plus :-)  Jonah, on the other hand....oh that boy.  Thankfully he's really cute :-)  Ha, ha!

Our cranberry sauce.  This was devoured.  No left overs.

The marshmallows!  Oh, yum!  More will be in our future :-)

Unfortunately the marshmallows melted too much, we will take note of that for future use.  In front is the stuffing.

Pumpkin pie. This was great!!!  Just like the real deal.

Aubrey was loving the action of putting up the tree.  So much to see and do.

Ooh, what's this?

Jed was a bystander, or sitter.  He was keeping guard of his dinosaur stocking.

Christmas music playing in the background on Pandora.

Flannery unpacking the nativity scene.

Jonah checking out the angel, and Isa trying to get in the picture.

Flannery had the honors of putting the top of the tree on.

She needed a bit of a lift.

After the lights were hung it was time to hang up the ornaments.  Lots of handmade ones.  Thinking we need a new round of ornaments to put up.  I may have the girls help make some felt ones.  I like non breakable :-)

Aubrey taste tested all of the ornaments for us.

Each of the girls have a few ornaments that are theirs only.  They made sure to get those up out of the way of little hands.

Everyone pitching in.  Seriously, the tree trimming gets done faster each year!

Saoirse decided to use the box that houses our Christmas things to get a better spot.

Some dancing was in order.

And no need for holly when you have a cute cherub to kiss.