Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a nice Thanksgiving.  The first time we had 'dinner' at the lunch hour.  My mother-in-law needed to leave before dark, so we actually ate early for the first time (since I've been making Thanksgiving dinner that is).  We spent the few days before Thanksgiving doing a bunch of our "spring cleaning".  We got a LOT done.  I am very thankful for that.  We still have the outer rooms to do, with a few things left in a couple of rooms.  BUT, I am very thankful that my house is now worthy of those 'after' pictures I was speaking of :-)

With all that cleaning, I kept Thanksgiving simple.  Really simple.  As in instant potatoes, instant stuffing, crock pot ham, no other casseroles, a no bake pumpkin pie, and had help with our apple pies.  I also had all the pots/dishes out that we needed before hand.  All those things really added up to my easiest Thanksgiving dinner making yet!!!  I made sure to wash all dishes as I went along.  I did take a small break after dessert before I tackled those dessert dishes, but we've never, EVER had a more easier, and cleaner Thanksgiving.

The only down side to our day was that after dinner my illness went up a notch.  Aubrey came down with a fever later in the day, followed by Jed in the middle of the night.  Aubrey is quite sick.  If it weren't for Jed having a fever as well I may have taken him to the doctors (so far with this illness no one else has had a fever).  But for now I am waiting and watching (it has now only been 24 hours of fever, so we are still in 'safe mode').  I am keeping him hydrated, and making sure to rub some essential oils on him, and giving him Motrin/Tylenol when he gets really miserable.  Hoping he'll be better in the next day or two.  With that, Moira, Jonah and Saoirse all woke with various startings of this illness.  Oh, joy.

I don't think you all want to hear how sick we all are any more, so here are just a couple of pictures I snapped yesterday:

 We put an extra leaf in our table to make it more manageable with the food and extra chair.  Don't know why we finally did this just this year!!!  Made a big difference in the space we all had to eat :-)

 Jonah showing off his place setting.  Flannery made the turkeys, and Saoirse made stand up name cards.

 This was my turkey, which has a baby turkey in the tummy :-)

 Moira waving hi.  My mother-in-law commented on how Moira smiles so much more now, and more naturally than she used to (due to having had braces).  We are grateful we were able to do that for her, as it has made a wonderful difference.

Aubrey wanted to show off his turkey as well.  He is finally doing much better, with his weekend incident (which I still haven't blogged about!).

Moira with her turkey.  You can see the paint brush, with some 'blobs' of paint that Flannery decorated her turkey with.  She drew a horse helmet on Isabella's.  Very cute.

Well that is all I have for now.  I need to get the boys outside, lest I loose my mind with their running around the house!  Then on to cleaning before Jeremiah gets back from grocery shopping.  That will mean lots to put away, and dinner to throw on.  And THEN after that we will put our Christmas tree up.  The boys have NOT stopped asking about that ALL. DAY. LONG!!!!