Thanksgiving Weekend

I absolutely love Thanksgiving and everything about it. I love planning the meal, going out and buying all the groceries, cooking, and spending the day pigging out on way too much food. This year we spent Thanksgiving with the Langhams--we've been doing this for the past several years, and we always have a lot of fun together. After we have gorged ourselves, Jill and I always spend the afternoon poring over ads and getting our game plan ready for Black Friday shopping. Yes, we are some of the crazy people who get up and are waiting in line for the stores to open up at 4 am. This year was no different, and we found some really good deals. On Saturday Jeremy went golfing with some friends while Katie and I stayed home. We spent the day wrapping Christmas presents, listening to music, coloring, and baking. Katie loves to help in the kitchen so we decided we'd bake some pumpkin bread. It always takes twice as long to get anything done when she's helping (and I do have to pray for patience beforehand) but we have a lot of fun together. She's my little Martha Stewart. Here are some pictures of my little chef.

She's so goofy.

While the bread was baking we headed downstairs to color and watch Camp Rock. Katie all of a sudden started screaming, "Mommy, Mommy, Maggie has an animal in her mouth." This didn't really surprise me since we live out of town. Maggie has been known to drag dead carcuses of animals into the yard. And it's not uncommon for us to see deer, foxes, beavers, armadillos, skunks, snakes, etc.... So Katie and I put our shoes on and went outside to investigate. This is what Maggie had killed.

Katie was fascinated with this very fat field mouse that Maggie had caught. She wasn't quite as interested in it as she was in the snake that she spotted while I was picking blackberries this summer. The "very large worm" that Katie spotted while I was picking blackberries turned out to be this snake she's holding in the picture below.

Yes, it is alive.

The weekend ended with snow on Sunday. Katie absolutely loves snow, and we couldn't pass up this opportunity to take even more pictures. On the way to church as we were listening to Christmas carols and Katie says in a loud voice, "Thank you so much for the snow God." I'm so glad that she is thankful for the little things in life, and is so willing to verbalize how grateful she is to our God.