Thankful for Family, Finds, and Facemasks

Our Thanksgiving weekend was pretty low-key, which was exactly what we needed heading into a holiday season that looks not low-key. The girls had a two-day school week and spent Wednesday home with Gma and Gpa J. Quinn and Gma were in charge of the Thanksgiving pies - and Quinn was in heaven! According to her writing journal, baking pies was her favorite part of the weekend.

Thanksgiving morning found five Vannestes huddled around the oven, putting the bird in with great ceremony. Then the kids dug into the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins I made like it was their job! I was also armed with a fun pilgrim hat cookie project for mid-morning when the million commercials during the parade (and the wait for our guests to arrive) got to them. They were all able to make their cookies without assistance and had a blast. It seemed they didn't hate taste-testing them either.

We had Gma and Gpa, Gpa V, Auntie, and Enchilada and her mom Gramchilada for dinner. We had a great dinner, a fun afternoon, a second round of pie and queso/chips, and a rousing Pie Face contest (thanks to leftover pie whipped cream). Pie Face was initially a bust - but thanks to Mike's amazing fix-it skills, he repaired/patched whatever internal pieces were broken and whipped cream yet again flew into people's faces.

Mike had to work on Friday so the kids and I got to hang out with Gpa V for a bit in the morning and have donuts with him as is tradition. After Gpa headed north, we went down to the basement to play and to clean out the storage room. The girls did a great job helping to identify toys that we could move to their next owner and we created some nice space in the storage room (conveniently in time for the Christmas influx ... I always have a strategy!). Between trips to Once Upon a Child and Goodwill, we've moved the whole pile out of our house.

While digging around in the storage room, I found a couple games from my childhood - a Crazy Bears puzzle game and Giant Old Maid. Both games were well loved by Auntie and me and brought back a lot of memories. Especially Crazy Bears and how dang hard that game is. I embarrassed to admit that - because after HOURS of working on it, Quinn has mastered it.

I was researching the game and found an article about how difficult it was. The author couldn't believe it was marketed to children (it says ages 6-99) because "what six-year-old on the planet could solve this?" Our six-year-old, that's who! And now, Declan is starting to try to figure it out. I would not put it past our four-year-old to also demonstrate some mad skills.

Giant Old Maid has also been a giant hit! Although we are still working on our strategy for holding the giant cards in tiny hands. And I've chosen to not sing the song that Em and I used to sing to the loser ... "xxxx is an old maid. xxxx is an old maid." We're still refining our sportsmanship skills around here.

Sunday afternoon, we had a parenting oooops. We thought Dec had hockey practice, but it was actually on Saturday (so we missed it). Dec was totally bummed out, but open skate started in 40 minutes. So instead, Mike ran home, got everyone's skates, and we did family open skate. Everyone has upped their skating game considerably since last year! Dec even skated in full gear to practice moving in all his pads.

I was grateful for helmets and facemasks - as all three skaters smacked their heads on the ice a few times. [Dec tends to fall face first on the ice - so I really appreciated his facemask] But we made several successful trips around the rink with minimal falls - and lots of smiles.

We wrapped up the weekend with a viewing of The Grinch (the cartoon, not their daddy!). In full honesty, we had a great weekend ... and no one was on board with it being Monday!