Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving was the week I got home.  I didn't have much time to recover from my trip before jumping right into the next thing.  We tried to do Thanksgiving well this year.  I went on pinterest and found a few ideas of activities we could do.  It made it fun and a little more special.

The kids painted turkeys with watercolors.

Nels's work gave him a 19 lb turkey.  He's the man and took care of that turkey like a pro!

He did the mashed potatoes too.  Don't ask him how much butter he put in them!  They were delicious.

We roasted some veggies and put some bacon on them.

The turkey was so moist and flavorful.  The best turkey I've ever had!  Well done Nels!

Here's the spread and Isak and Kira. :)

I turn around to take a selfie and look how quick those kids jump into the food!

And all dished up.  We had a spinach salad with strawberries and a homemade lemon dressing.  Mmmmm.  Everything tasted so good.

While we ate our turkey dinner, we took turns saying something we were grateful for in the order of the alphabet.  We got through the alphabet and the kids wanted to do it again.  💜  So fun.

One of the activities we did was M&M gratitude.  You pick an M&M and then the color coordinated with a gratitude prompt.  Example, red - say a person you are grateful for.

Next was "Roll a Turkey".  Roll the dice and then it tells you what turkey part you get to put on.  The kids liked gluing the turkey together.

I helped Noah and he loved it.

He was so proud of his turkey!

For the older kids we made this turkey joke teller.  That was fun and funny.

Our favorite activity was shoot the turkey!  I bought nerf guns and orange balloons.  We drew turkeys on the balloons, taped them onto the table and fire away!

Kira drew the turkeys.

They got pretty good at shooting those balloons!

I made this pumpkin turtle pie that was pretty good.

I loved shooting those balloons.  To make it trickier, I had the kids keep the balloons in the air and then I would shoot the balloons.  Haha.  So fun!

I listened to a great podcast from Entre Leadership about the First Thanksgiving.  It was about the pilgrims voyage over to America and their first winter here.  They only had five kernels of corn to eat a day!  How they survived and how the native Americans helped them.  I also read Abraham Lincoln's proclamation instituting the Thanksgiving holiday.  I really enjoyed learning more about this holiday and had fun celebrating it with our family.  We have truly been blessed with an abundance in all areas of our life.  I'm so thankful for Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, the gospel, family and so much more.  It's true - when you begin to count your blessings you feel like you have plenty - enough and then some!