Happy Thanksgiving!

After 13 years of marriage, it was finally my turn to host Thanksgiving. We always go to Phoenix for Thanksgiving (except the year Joey was born), but Andy's parents bought a house in Philadelphia and live there for part of the year, so we stayed in town. I was a little nervous about roasting a turkey for the first time, but between advice from my sister's mother-in-law (thanks, Allison), Pinterest and a Martha Stewart video on YouTube, it went pretty well!

Hannah and I had a fun time setting and decorating the table.

 In fact, we were so excited that we actually got the table ready the day before so we just sat on the ground for dinner Wednesday night.

The morning of Thanksgiving while I was working in the kitchen, Hannah and Ellie made some more Thanksgiving decorations.

This was our crew this year: Nana (the photographer), Bubba, my brother Timmy, his girlfriend Jill, and our family of five.

This little one had a fever, but thanks to some Tylenol, she was mostly back to her normal self before too long.

See? Much better.

She just LOVES having a dog around here.

Bubba and Ellie made up a game using the timer on Bubba's phone and some baby toy blocks.

Meanwhile, Joey and Hannah were having fun showing Uncle Timmy and Jill the video game Andy's been making. (Timmy and Jill, you should see the spaceship Andy and Joey made for the game on Friday!).

After dinner, the kids and my parents went on a walk on the hill behind our house. We heard them calling to us and went out to see them on our high back wall!

Later we played card games like Rat-a-Tat Cat, Spoons (a big hit!), and Old Maid.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we are really enjoying our quiet weekend at home. We bought a fake Christmas tree on the day after Christmas last year so we took advantage of our down time, and completely decorated for Christmas on Friday.

Now we are in full-on Christmas mode around here and it feels nice and cozy especially with cooler weather and rain that we are really enjoying!