Thanksgiving in the Country

Greetings. Hope you all had a wonderful holiday. We had fun with our family in Louisiana, and came home feeling like it was a short weekend. Maybe because last time we were up there (can you believe anywhere in Louisiana is "up there"?) we had camped out in my uncle's living room for over a week during our hurricane evacuation.

This year for Thanksgiving, there were two more babies than last year (my cousin Lauren, and my nephew Trey), which made five children ages 5 and under. So the living room of my Uncle Jesse's house was filled with the sound of kids having fun.

My Uncle Jesse and Aunt Kim have a beautiful old farm house, complete with a horse and donkey in the backyard. The girls didn't get to visit with the donkey, as it rained nearly the entire weekend. We did manage to get some family pictures on the front porch, though.








Jeff and I have never been ones for "Black Friday" shopping. The thought of getting up at an outrageously early hour to squeeze into a store with a thousand focused, craze-eyed shoppers has never appealed to either one of us. But this year, on a whim, we decided to do it just for fun. My mom sat with our sleeping girls, while Jeff and I left the house at 4:3o Friday morning to drive in to the local Wal Mart. We arrived at the store, decided against a shopping cart, and found our way down the aisle to get close to the item we were stalking: a KitchenAid stand mixer. (We had to ask a Wal Mart employee how this all worked.) We stood around with everyone else and at 5am the shrink wrap was torn from the sale items. Jeff helped a women get her two mixers into her buggy; then he grabbed one for us, and we maneuvered through the store to the children's dept. There we found the girls some cute coats for a great price. We made our way to the checkout, but not before Jeff dove into the electronics department, and emerged with a copy of Kung Fu Panda. Yes, Teesa, now we have a copy of our very own! ;)

We had already decided that if we came out of the store with nothing, we'd be happy because we'd done something together we had never experienced before. As I was pouring my coffee at 4:15 that morning before leaving the house, I remarked to Jeff, "This is the first time in a long time that we've been leaving by ourselves this early in the morning to go on an adventure." It felt like years ago, when we were traveling, and would have to get up at crazy hours to make the airport or the train station. Ah... memories....

So that fun early trip to Wal Mart kicked off our family shopping weekend. We do holidays a little differently in our home. Stay tuned and I'll tell you about how we do Thanksgiving and Christmas at the Hazletons.

Until then, here are a few things I'm thankful for:

1. My beautiful, healthy family

2. Jeff's job

3. Our house! And all the ammenities: backyard, clothesline, garden, more space, washer and dryer....

4. Our church family

5. The opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom

6. Priceless friendships

7. My incredibly giving husband

8. And of course, ... my KitchenAid stand mixer!