Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving table

Parker sneaking food from Drew's plate

The week before Thanksgiving week was crazy! Blake informed me Sunday night(after watching our friends 3 kiddos for the weekend and another friend's little girl for an evening while they were at the hospital with newborn) that he was in charge of the Dental Squadron Thanksgiving dinner. Then he fell asleep before giving me any more details. I was a little panicked thinking we were supposed to provide Thanksgiving dinner for over 100 people. He cleared it up the next night though explaining we are in charge, but everyone is bringing food for a pot luck and that there are people in charge of kid activities. Basically we were in charge of organization, decorations and adult entertainment. 

So, being cheep as I am, and having no time to order anything online we got creative. We went outside for walks and hikes and collected sticks, pine cones, berries, and leaves. We needed center pieces for 20 tables and some extra decorations for the walls and food tables.  We didn't bring any of our holiday decorations, so we couldn't even use what we already had. They are still in Nebraska. So, by Thursday night I had 10 jars with pinecones, berries and branches and leaves in them and 6 pumpkins with fresh flowers(left over from Relief Society activity). I still needed 4 centerpieces.

I had some fabric someone had given me in Ohio that was perfect fall colors. So I cut into different size rectangles and sewed them into tubes with one end sewn shut. Then I put some rocks from outside into the bottom and stuffed them full of plastic bags. I hot glued the top shut around a stick, wrapped some twine stuff around them, then pulled some leaves off another decoration and glued them on with some grassy stuff left over from a project a few years ago. And tada, I had 10 little pumpkins that I loved. 

So We decorated the 20 tables and 5 food tables and I spent a total of $0!!! I did end up buying some stuff for the kids activities, but nothing for decorations. Blake came up with some Thanksgiving word searches and trivia and a little game to figure out what language the "thank you" was in. There was a theme of Thanksgiving around the world so I made a little subway art thing that had thank you in a bunch of different languages. I wish I would have taken pictures, but amid all the craziness the kids started getting sick and Remi had an eye doctor appointment. So the top picture is all I have. I used the same things at the Dental party.

At the beginning of the week we had planned to do a Thanksgiving dinner Saturday afternoon, but when Friday came we were tired and the kids were sick and Ingersoll's kids were sick. So, we postponed it to Sunday after church. Saturday we celebrated Parker's birthday and did some of the cooking. Then Sunday we finished up the prep and had Ingersoll's, Sanderson's(Broden's church and school teachers) and Brother Marrott(his family moved back to the states already) over for a fun, yummy Thanksgiving dinner. There were 8 adults and 7 kids. We are so grateful we have friends to spend time with when we are so far from family.

Parker was so proud of himself for climbing up onto this table. I tried not to laugh, but he was so excited and was clapping. I couldn't resist clapping with him.