Whew! ( In a Good Way!)

Happy Thanksgiving to all 3 of my faithful blog readers!  What a weekend it has been for us!  For starters, I only had two days of school.  But since we spent Tuesday afternoon prepping and eating a Thanksgiving feast at school, I'd say we only had 1.5 days of learnin'.  And then I only had swim practice once this week and religion class was cancelled so it was pretty stellar for me all around.

Dad had the whole week off and thoroughly enjoyed it.  Mom was the only one to put in any kind of effort this weekend but even she only worked 2 1/2 days.

Wednesday afternoon, we headed out for a few nights of camping with some good friends.  We could not have planned a better few days weather wise.  70's during the day, 30's at night.  We got to our campsite around 3, pulled out our camp chairs, opened a beer and enjoyed this view.....

While mom and dad sat around, I got out my bike and tore up the place.  Our friends finally arrived around 4 with my favorite camping friend, Madeline and the fun really began.  Once the adults got all caught up on the visiting stuff and Madeline and I were worn out from riding our bikes, we hit the sack for a good night's sleep.
We were all up early and since it was a tad bit chilly, Madeline and I ate our cold breakfast in the comfort of the RV.  It was tough.

It warmed up quite nicely and the dads headed out for a Thanksgiving mountain bike ride while the ladies stayed back and lounged.  Madeline and I got in some bubble action for awhile and when we got bored of that, we got back on our bikes.

We finally managed to talk the moms out of their chairs and onto their bikes and headed up the road to a hiking/biking trail.  We were lucky enough to run into the dads coming back from their ride so we went on a nice family ride- even though the boys were bonking kind of big time.

We had one kind of big stream crossing that was a little nerve wracking.  I made it across the first time but on the way back, I fell into the water half way through, landed on my knees and came up crying.  Mom and Ms. Audrey waded in, got me upright and out of the water.  Once I stopped crying, I decided it was time to try it again.  I wasn't going to let some silly little creek stop me.  So back to the other side I went, got a nice, fast start and I made it!  Mom was super impressed by my determination.

We made it back to our cozy little camp site and got a rousing game of Corn Hole going.  It ended up being more of  a "pelt the dads with bean bags" kind of game but it was fun either way.

We finally started getting hungry close to sunset so Mom sent Madeline and I to set the table.  She bought all kinds of fancy stuff from the Dollar Store.  It looked just like Martha Stewart had visited our place.  Really.  We had ordered dinner from the grocery store and picked it up Wednesday,  so all we had to do was plop the food into pans and reheat it.  Easy-peasy and pretty tasty too.

Dad and Mr. Mike had the fun job of carving the pre-cooked turkey with a pairing knife on our wobbly dining table.  They did a commendable job and it all tasted just like turkey.

Here was our Thanksgiving sunset- a perfect ending to a perfect day.

We finally sat down to dinner by flashlight.  It was pretty chilly by that time so we bundled up but I think it made the dinner taste that much better.

After a fun dinner and more hanging out, we finally hit the hay expecting another good night's sleep.  We were doing great until about 2 AM when our low battery indicator started beeping and wouldn't stop.  Soooo- we ended up shutting everything down which included our heat!  Holy crap!  How do we live without heat??  It was 35 degrees outside! Stupid RV.  So we get out of bed all bleary eyed in the morning only to see our friends getting out of their trailer all bleary eyed too.  Turns out their battery went out too so they didn't have heat either.  Then we look across the way at the tent campers who seemed perfectly warm and content- and probably laughing at us if they knew the trauma we went through.  Anyway, we survived and we didn't have to resort to cannibalism or anything gross like that.

We got home about noon on Friday and spent the day recovering.
We got up nice and early on Saturday, got our exercise in, cleaned the house and then got going on Christmas!  We picked out our tree and got it up and decorated.  Dad worked hard and got the outside lights all up- one of his favorite things to do.  We are feeling very festive around here now

Sunday was another busy, busy day.  We had Grandpa Vern, Grandma Sue and our neighbors over for Thanksgiving Dinner, round two.  Mom made a big ol' turkey, mashed taters, gravy, corn pudding and a pie.  She put grandma in charge of the sweet potatoes.  Everything turned out really tasty and mom is thinking she may have this turkey/gravy thing figured out.  We'll see next year.
So, now that we are all rolling around the house, unable to button our pants, we declare this Thanksgiving officially over.  It was a great one and now we are off to Christmas!
Have a wonderful week!