Thanksgiving Week Recount

It is Monday afternoon here and I have just put up our Christmas tree, tonight Stewart and I will decorate it for Family Home Evening. It is our family tradition to assemble and decorate our Christmas tree the first Monday after Thanksgiving. It has been fun to talk about different family traditions we want to establish in our home and with our future family. Stewart informed me at Halloween it is our new family tradition established just this year to watch the Michael Jackson Thriller music video. We have also decided to declare the annual constructing of graham cracker houses a family tradition. Now I bet all this talk of family traditions makes you want to join our family huh… come on over, the more the merrier!

This past week Stewart had two major tests one on Monday and the other Tuesday. I don’t know if he passed them or not. The one test for his PBL group was 6 essay questions long. Stewart said he had some major hand cramping going on after two hours. I think his test started at 8:30 am and finished at 12:00 noon. Yeah, I would think just about everyone’s hands would be cramping up by that time. Tuesday, after his last test Stewart stayed at school and did all his homework so he could have a real Thanksgiving break. By Tuesday evening I had a free husband with no homework!!! It was so nice to spend time with Stewart and not have to send him off to do homework, I have forgotten how much I have missed just chilling with Stewart like that… it was fun.

On Wednesday, we decided since the weather was nice we wanted to get out of the house and go for a hike. We went to the Greenbrier National Forest, which is about 15 mins from our house. While trying to find a trail to hike we found a Frisbee golf course and we just so happened to have our Frisbees in the trunk. We played 9 holes, and then drove down the road a ways and found a place to explore by a stream. We had a good afternoon together laughing and challenging each other to walk the logs across the steam. That night we went to our friends the Rodebacks and watched a movie with them. Thanks for having us join you guys!!!

Thursday, we had Thanksgiving dinner with a nice family in our ward, the Burdettes. They had a house full of people, some family and some other people from the ward. They also had a large table full of food! You think I am kidding I am not… the table was packed with tons of dishes of food. We both feel very blessed that the Burdettes were kind and invited us to join them. I am not sure what we would have done if they had not invited us. That evening we went to some of our other friends' (James Bishop Family) home to play games and have more dessert. Melanie made several pies… I think there were about 6 or 7 different pies plus a dessert I made and one other dessert Nativa Rodeback made. I don’t know what they ended up doing with all the leftovers. I should mention that early in the day around 9 am Stewart participated in a friendly, game of touch football with some of the ward members. He had a lot of fun and even had a few good plays.

Friday we recovered from our Thanksgiving Day feast, cleaned our home and decorated a little bit for Christmas. On Saturday, Stewart and I drove to a larger town called Beckley, about 45 minutes West of here. We went to a craft store called Hobby Lobby just to explore. There was so much stuff to explore in that store. We wandered that store for about an hour. The idea was for me to find something crafty I could do to pass the time here at home; instead Stewart came away with a craft project of his own. He wants to work on it hear and there during school in hopes to help reduce the stress that builds or just take his mind off of school for a few minutes. I can not say I know what he is doing… you will just have to wait along with me for the finished project. Note: this may not be a finished project for several months… let the suspense begin! After Hobby Lobby we drove across the street and had lunch at a unique restaurant called Delightfully Yours. The food was amazing!!! I think I know where I want to eat out next time we head over to Beckley. We finished our trip to Beckley by watching the movie “Old Dogs” at the theater. It was a three star movie in my opinion. It was not everything the movie trailer made it out to be.

Wow this blog post is getting super long! I will end by expressing our deep love to our loving Heavenly Father, who is watching out for us. We have so many blessing in our lives. We can’t help but to feel deeply grateful for all the wonderful gifts Heavenly Father blesses us with. How grateful we are, words can’t truly express.