Thanksgiving Weekend

It's already Wednesday and Thanksgiving seems almost like a distant by-gone blur. But it was a wonderful, refreshing 4 day weekend for me and I need to write about it before I forget the details.

We went to the Thanksgiving Day parade with Dawn and Kira on Thursday morning, then stopped in to see the Comcast Christmas show at the Comcast Building in center city Philadelphia. The lights and animation and technical aspects made it an amazing show, but there was no mention of Christ and "the reason for the season."

The rest of the day, we spent at home by ourselves. I did some cleaning and laundry since I hadn't been home the last 2 Tuesdays (because of being with Christy and the new baby).

Friday was our family get together with Christy, Dawn & Amy and all their husbands and kids. Everyone got here at 1:00 pm. We did our family pictures first while everyone was still fresh. One of our family traditions on holidays is to take a hike. So when the pictures were finished, everyone left to go over to Longbridge Park in Hainesport. Christy stayed at the house because Claire is still so new and I stayed to keep her company. We were sorry to miss the hike because it looked like everyone had a good time.

Our Thanksgiving Dinner consisted of panzarottis. I know it took a lot of work to call Sal's Pizza and put in the order, but it's what everyone wanted. So I sacrificed! We also had a salad, cheese ball and crackers, a fruit plate and 2 pies.

Amy's masterpiece

Since all our girls are married and out of the house, I do not enjoy decorating the Christmas tree by myself. So I was hoping this year I could get everyone to help me. Andy got the tree out, the kids helped organize the branches for him, then they all helped put the decorations on the tree. It was such a treat to have the help and now it's done!We played a game together before everyone headed on home. It was a lovely day.

On Saturday, I had to be at the church at 10:00 am for worship team rehearsal. The person who had been scheduled to do slides on Sunday had told me he couldn't because of the holiday weekend. I had asked about 6 others if they could take his spot, but no one could. But after the rehearsal, Andy said what would I think about going to the shore and walking the boardwalk. It was such a nice day: the sun was shining, there was just a whisper of a breeze and the temperature was in the 60's. It was a pretty spontaneous thing for us to do, but it was fun and nice to get away and enjoy the day. We walked the boardwalk twice, doing 5 miles. Andy went down to the ocean, took his shoes and socks off and waded in the water for a little ways. He said the water wasn't that cold, but I didn't believe him. He has a reputation for swimming in water that no one else will because it's too cold. I took my camera along but unfortunately, left it in the car so I have no pictures of the ocean or the beach.

It's been nice having warmer days right now but I doubt it will last much longer. This weekend we'll be busy with the Nativity. And the office has been hectic this week getting ready for it. So it was a blessing to have the 4 days to enjoy family, the outdoors, a couple days off before heading into craziness!