On to December...

I suppose it's time I've done a Thanksgiving update...sorry I've been slacking. We made our annual trip to MI for Thanksgiving and had a wonderful time with our families and friends. This is the one holiday that we actually get to see BOTH sides of our family all on the same day! It's fabulous! Brian's family rents a house in Holland for a couple of days, so we've always been able to celebrate with them in the evening on Thanksgiving. And, as tradition goes, we spend the lunch meal with my Mom's side, this year at Aunt Betty's (unfortunately I don't have any pictures from that party). The food was delicious all day and yes, we ate two turkey dinners in one day and you know what, we LOVED every minute of it! (We even had it for lunch on Friday and loved that too! The kids did choose PB&J on Friday, but that's okay! :O)

The Barker, Giere, Johanik, Smith, Grego gathering...such love around that table!

Uncle Jim showing Sammy the goods on his iPhone!

This is a rare sight, so we had to caputure...Ellie cozying up to Peter and not Hannah!

(don't worry, she was nearby!!)

Sammy was not too sure about me holding Ruthie...he made sure she knew I belonged to him!

The girls with Ruth...so sweet at 4 weeks!

Yes, we are quite smitten with our new little niece!

Then, on Saturday evening, we celebrated our niece Taylor and Hannah's 6th birthday in a joint party at my parent's. And, as if a birthday party in and of itself isn't exciting enough, we had a strange, incoherent woman show up at their door right after dinner...in the dark, without a coat on and telling tall tales of her day spent walking up and down the beach. Let's just say, we were all a little rattled by her short visit, but we were still certainly able to enjoy the girls' big night. (it's a long story, that I don't feel like getting into here...it was just plain weird)

Sammy giving 5 to Great-Grandma! She loved it and it was priceless to watch!!!

Hannah had been playing around on the piano and when I turned to look at her a minute later, Great-Grandma had sat down to play with her. Words cannot even describe the love...

Sammy and Great-Grandma playing pat-a-cake! She loved having him on her lap, even if we had to lift if up for her and get him down. And, even if it was only for about 10 seconds before he'd want to run off to find more trouble!

Great-Grandma with the big kids.

New Wedding Day Barbie!

Beautiful 6 year olds (well, Hannah is almost 6 and always beautiful!)

And, if that wasn't enough, we also got to throw in a celebrating of Brian's 34th birthday (on the 29th)! Poor guys got a bit gypped out of a real birthday party, but enjoyed his day nonetheless. We did get take-out for dinner after the kids went to bed on Sunday night, which was a nice Birthday treat for him (and me!).

So, all in all, a great weekend and now we're happy to move on to December and the wonderful Christmas season. Celebrating Christ birth, sharing lovely moments with family and friends and loving on our children as we share gifts with them that we've been blessed with.

And, as with most people, the tradition here is to decorate our Christmas tree as soon as possible after Thanksgiving is over. We were able to start the process Sunday night already, since we returned home early in the afternoon (to avoid nasty holiday traffic b/t MI and Il...which we did manage to miss!). With our ACTIVE 18 month old at our feet, we decided to go ahead with the tree, but to put only non-breakable ornaments up high out of his reach. Hannah was very excited to help with this and took care of most of the ornament placing. The picture below may not do it justice...let's just say, Brian has decided the girls need a little tutorial in distribution. :O) I love it though! It's just so "us" right now in this stage of life...and, I'm happy to announce that 4 days after putting it up, Sammy has only tugged on the lights a couple of times and we've had no issue with the tree being pulled down! (Yes, I'm knocking on wood right now...LOUDLY! :O)