My Grateful Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was a little different this year. We were all packed and ready to go to St George, when the weather forecasters predicted the Blizzard of the Decade. Anyway it was a hard decision to make but Bryce did not have a good feeling about it. After much prayer and thinking he decided that we should spend Thanksgiving at our house. I am thankful my husband always listens to the spirit and takes such good care of us. He is so wonderful. Well if you know me this change of plans was presented quite a dilemma for me. I don't do anything small and I had one day to pull off my first Thanksgiving with just my little family. I wanted to make it special, because we were all a little bummed to be spending without a lot of family. So, I went to work. My first problem was that I had packed up all of my Thanksgiving decorations. I thought we were leaving so Tuesday after I packed our luggage I packed away my decorations. Trenton said I was nuts for taking some of them out, but he later told me how Thankful he was that I did it. So this is how we started our day. We watched the Macy's Parade and made some decorations.Trenton helped me with the Turkey- okay he played with the turkey!
Bryce helped the kids make turkeys with cookies and candy.

Then all the kids helped prepare some of the dinner. Kylee helped with the pumpkin cheesecake, Dixie Salad, and she did the jello.

Trenton made the corn casserole.

Here is Cody adding the Swiss cheese to the Swiss Veggie Melody.

Here is one of the crafts, the kids made was their napkin holder/ place cards. Trenton loves the big eyes he put on his. I do think it is cute.

Kylee and Cody decided we needed more so the made these cute Lego Creations. Here is Kylee's creation. It is part of the first Thanksgiving with a Turkey dinner. (Now that is a HUGE turkey)

Here is Cody's turkey and pilgrim:

This was our place setting. The kids loved setting the table. The thought the little gravy boats and the gold ware. (I bought it at a garage sale- they were excited when I bought them because they love grandpa's)

Here is the whole table. I love the sign we made with corn, spilt peas, beans, macaroni, leaves and twigs.

The turkey turned out great.

This my favorite decoration. My mom made both of us one when I was first married.

Everyone is so excited to eat.

Everything turned out so great.

We are watching Casan and Brett's chicken Sugar. My kids thought Sugar need her own feat. Here they are hand feeding Sugar her feast.

After a fun walk it was time to dig through all the ads for Black Friday.

They it was Wii time. We love playing it all together!

I moved out of 8920 west 4th ave when I was 10, so I know this happened a long time ago. But, one Thanksgiving my mom gave each of us a handful of corn. We then had to put the unpopped corn in a bowl and tell something we were thankful for. She then talked about how much we were blessed and then popped the popcorn telling us when we grateful our for the things Heavenly Father gives us he expands our blessings and we are able to see more blessings. I must have been 8 or 9 but I remember always wanted my blessings to grow just like the popcorn. Now I want my children learn to be grateful for all the blessings. My kids made the Turkey pot and then we took turns placing kernels in and talking about all our blessing. I believe when we focus on our little blessing they become big. I hope this activity sticks in my mind like it did mine. We popped the popcorn and then watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving. The popcorn was a great treat for a couple of reasons- the Indians made popcorn at the first Thanksgiving and that is what Charlie Brown serve at his Dinner.

We had a great time. I love Thanksgiving! It is a holiday just about saying thanks for all our blessing. Every night we do our thankfuls as a family before prayer. I love this tradition because we all have so much to be thankful for. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.