Thanksgiving Break

I am always so ready for Thanksgiving break, and this year was no exception!  It was a busy week, but also a lot of fun.

 Nathan came home last Friday night, and on Sunday, he and I did a joint presentation.  He is required to do a recruiting presentation, and I suggested doing it to homeschoolers, instead of finding a local school to go to.  We sent out an email to local groups, and people forwarded it to other groups.  We had a good turnout of very interested families!  My part was on applying for ROTC scholarships and the academies as a homeschooler, with helpful tips for the mom, who has to be the guidance counselor. It was very well-received!

We had been planning on having it at our house, but when more and more people said they were going to come, we couldn't figure out how to make it work, since our only TV screen is in our basement, it's not that big, and we don't have that much seating down there.  So the L's said we could use their family room, which was an excellent set-up! 

 Luke got home around 9:45 Tuesday evening.  Everyone was very glad to see him, especially Verity!  She  sat in his lap like this, even while he ate some soup and cornbread, until we put her to bed.

 For Thanksgiving, we went over to the L's house, as usual, with other families who are like family!  I made sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce, plus cookie dough brownies, ginger snaps, and a chocolate pecan pie.  We had such a lovely and relaxing time, just visiting and hanging out for hours.  Some games were played, some football was watched, and the kids all bounced on the L's new trampoline that our 4 boys had helped Amanda assemble on Wednesday!  Best of all, I made enough of my dishes to have leftovers on Friday, with another turkey.  Yay!

 Because the weekend wasn't busy enough, we decided to celebrate Drew's birthday on  Saturday, even though it's not really until Thursday. But I'll be teaching all that day, and Caleb and Jonathan have Civil Air Patrol that night, plus Nathan and Luke won't be here. . . so clearly Saturday was a better day!  We had corn dogs for lunch, since that was what Drew  has been wanting for quite some time,and we opened presents after dinner.  The only thing Drew had asked for was a "Darth Vader mask", so I found one on Amazon, and he was super happy with that, as well as with his selection of candy. 

 A lady from our church was selling some boys dress-up stuff a few months ago, and I snagged it, thinking of Drew's birthday.  We have plenty of girly dress up stuff, but our boys' selection is pretty worn or already been thrown out!  This set had a pilot, firefighter, and police outfit, and Drew and Micah have already been having a blast dressing up in them. 

After presents, we had cake.  Drew wanted a Minion cake,specifically "Kevin".  I googled him to find  a picture to use as a model, and it turned out pretty cute!  It was super easy too, since I only had to shape the top.  I had also bought a new set of frosting color gels from Amazon to use, since I was really getting  tired of my Wilton ones (hard to get out, separated easily, and my latest black one was actually dark green!).  These were a "Good Cooking Gourmet Liqua-Gel Food Coloring" set of 12 colors, and I must say I was *very* happy with them.  They come in squeeze bottles, which makes them 1000x easier to get out than Wilton.  The colors were better, and they didn't separate (although in all honesty, I made the frosting and frosted the cake Saturday afternoon, and it was completely gone by Saturday bedtime, so there wasn't much time for colors to separate, lol).  I was able to mix lemon yellow and orange to get a perfect Minion color, and I mixed the 2 blues in the kit to get a better blue for Kevin's overalls.  The colors were so easy to work with!

Drew was adamant that he would light the candles, but that ended up being a team effort with Luke helping him hold down the button.  Nonetheless, he got them all lit and quite proud of himself!  Five is such a  fun age.  He is looking forward to his "real" birthday on Thursday.  He wants pizza for his birthday dinner, and a Thursday is definitely the perfect night for that!

Nathan  left this morning, and Luke is at the airport now, so break is officially over.   We just have to make it 3 more weeks until Christmas break . . . .