Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving was so great this year!  I loved every second of it!!  Mike and I hosted my family this year.  We had 16 people, and got to use our formal dining room for only the second time ever.  This room is furnished, as I've mentioned before, but not finished yet.  There's just a few more details I need to add at some point, but it still looked pretty great all set for the big day.  This was the adults table...

And here's the kids table.  I love how they both turned out...

Here's Mike and I with the big spread before everyone started digging in...

The kiddos had a great time at their table.  We constantly heard them talking and laughing...

And, all us adults had a great time at ours as well...

After dinner, we all sat around and watched some football, and the kiddos played a little football of their own in the backyard...

My parents had brought a puzzle over, so we set that up on the card table and everyone just took turns working on it for awhile...

In the evening, we also went to see "Frozen.".  I loved it!  It is one of my new favorite Disney films.  So, so cute!  A definite must see!!

Then we came back to the house where we ate pie, played games & finished up the puzzle.  Then, around 9:00ish, everyone started to head home.  It was a great Thanksgiving!  The food was delicious, the company was great & we all had a great time!

The next day, we decked our halls for a good majority of the day.  When we set up the tree, we realized that a bunch of lights had gone out.  Some were even a brownish/black color, like there had been a surge or something.  We're not sure when it happened, probably sometime last year is all we can imagine, but we're probably pretty lucky our house didn't go up in flames at the time!

Mike went and bought some handy little tool that was supposed to help you diagnose problems with Christmas lights and also help you repair them.  And, guess what, it worked!  Well, it didn't work on the lights that had turned black.  I'm pretty sure they were toast.  We ended up just cutting those ones off the tree and replacing them.  But, the handy little tool helped fix several other strands of lights, saving us a lot of money & time.  In the end, the tree ended up looking beautiful (even if it did take us most the day to get it working)...

I didn't take many other pictures of my decorations, but I did take a couple pictures of my stuff I put inside my entertainment center shelves.  It's the perfect little place to put all those nicknack's I've never had the perfect place for...

And then, a few nights later, my Mom gave me an early Christmas present.  A couple of Jim Shore Santas!  She gave me the French one...

And the German one...

I think they are so cute & they go perfect in the entertainment center.

Later that night, the whole family came back over to eat leftovers from the day before and play a few games.  We played Word on the Street (which is a really fun game) and Uno...

It was a really fun weekend!  We loved having our whole family over at our house & hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  It was awesome!!  I love Thanksgiving.  It's a great time to really focus on how richly we are each blessed!  And, hey, there's food involved--lots of it--so you *know* I'm going to be a fan!!  --Lindsay