Thanksgiving with family

     Here it is the Monday following Thanksgiving and the last of our company has gone home. Sarah and her children left for home this afternoon. I so enjoy having our kids and grandkids come to visit but it does get a little hectic.  When everybody is here I don't get to spend much time with individual grandkids, but it is a lot of fun to just sit back and listen to them connect with their cousins that they don't get to see often. It is a time of happy chaos for me, surrounded all these people who I love so much. It warms my heart to see my children and their spouses doing such a great job raising our sweet  grandchildren.  I did have some good quality time with the grandkids who helped me give Joey his morning walks.

     Our Thanksgiving stress was somewhat reduced this year by my daughter-in-law Beth volunteering to host the Thanksgiving dinner at their house in nearby Monroe. I say "our stress" but really I mean Linda's stress.  My biggest sacrifice for family coming to visit is probably my willingness to step on leggo pieces for several weeks following the holiday.  We had a very nice time with everyone showing up for Thanksgiving dinner except the Kangs.  That meant a dinner with about 25 people in James' and Beth's rather small home.  Thanks for taking one for the team Beth!  Sarah and her six children showed up later that evening and stayed through Monday afternoon. I think we did end up with all nineteen grandkids at our house at some point during the past five days.
     I've included a few pictures of Lilly modeling one of the 8 tam hats I've cranked out over the past four months. The amazing thing was that she kept the hat on long enough for a few pictures.  The tam hats are fairly easy to do and seem to be a big hit with the girls

       

Grandparent Day with Luna

   Linda and I attended Grandparent Day at Luna's kindergarten on Wednesday.   It was a sweet experience.  Since it was the day before Thanksgiving we did the obligatory turkey with cut out hand prints for the tail.  Luna's teacher did an informal poll of her students as to whether they were staying home or doing a car trip for Thanksgiving.  It was interesting that from Luna's perspective coming to our house (3 miles from her house) or to Uncle James' and Aunt Beth's house ( 8 miles from her house) constituted significant car trips.
Luna's kindergarten teacher, Miss A., is very sweet and kindly.

    I spent the evening baking pies for Thanksgiving.  I did two cherry pies, three pumpkin pies, and two pie shells for a lemon merengue and a peanut butter pie.  Linda did the peanut butter pie and the lemon pudding for the lemon merengue pie the following morning. I was particularly happy with the cherry pies as they set up well rather than turning out runny as they have in the past.  I don't particulaly enjoy making pies, but I really love eating them.  Although I can never get the crust just right so that it's easy to roll out I do seem to have the flaky part down pretty well..A good fruit pie such as rhubarb, cherry, or apple is one of my favorite desserts.

Quality time with Lance

    I got to spend some quality time with my three year old grandson Lance on Tuesday.   I babysat Lance for part of the day and ferried my granddaughter Luna to and from kindergarten while their mother Rachel worked at the bee store.  First we did a work related errand. Lance accompanied me as we walked three blocks to the bank to make some deposits for the bee store. Lance is always enthused about this particular chore as it usually includes a stop by the Pilchuck Drive-in for a milk shake on the return trip.  Lance has been expanding his milk shake horizons over the past month and has learned that he likes butterscotch, pumpkin pie, and marshmallow milk shakes.
    At home Lance assisted me in sweeping leaves off the deck of the tree house and installing a latch on the clean out door of my new chicken tractor.  We also assembled the bed in the guest room.  I say we, but Lance's role was more supervisory in nature.  Lance is very easy to watch if you involve him in what you are doing and the activity involves some kind of tool.  It really bothers him to see something not fully assembled or in need of repair such as a burnt out light bulb or missing switch plate.  In the case of the bed, it bothered him no end that the bed wasn't put together.  Linda has been painting the guest room so the bed had been taken apart so it could be moved away from the walls.  Linda had already asked me to put the bed back together, but Lance was determined to give me no rest until the job was done.  He was also unhappy that the base plate for the overhead light was hanging down six inches from the ceiling.  He very grudgingly accepted my explanation that Grandma Linda had done that to allow her to paint that portion of the ceiling.  It was almost like he was suspicious that I was making up an excuse to avoid the work.
    We took advantage of a respite in our normally rainy November weather to take some pictures of our neighbors' scottish highlander cattle.  Lance is quite taken with the neighbors' cows and always makes a point of announcing their presence in the field across from our house.  It's pretty easy to tell which pictures Lance took as the pictures are shot through the fence rather than over it.