Thanksgiving 2008

Finally getting the Thanksgiving pictures up-- sorry there are so few. I left my camera in our RV while we went to the actual Thanksgiving celebration so I was only able to get pictures the next day.

Every Thanksgiving we head to the central valley of California to visit my dads side of the family. We love the tradition and we have a blast every year. It is usually a two day event-- Thursday we have Thanksgiving at my cousins and we are usually there from noon to about 9pm. Then on Friday we go up to my grandma's land in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada's and shoot guns and then end up at another one of my cousins homes for another huge meal. It is just always a great time but this year was hard because this was the first Thanksgiving we have spent in years without my grandma. My grandma passed away in March (at 92 years old) and now all her land and her home is all for sale so this is probably our last year to shoot on her land. Anyway, besides that, we had a wonderful time!!

Ethan shooting with dad, my mom shooting and Christian, Zac (my cousin Margie's son) and Ethan

Brad shooting, Christian shooting with Kevin, Austin (Cousin Margie's other son) and Owen

Every year we park our RV on Grandma's land but this year it was only an empty house-- no one lives there anymore but we still parked there. Anyway, when we got there late Wednesday night we went to plug into the power at her house and there was this adorable stray Queensland Healer dog staring at us. Lots of dogs are abandoned on my grandmas land for some reason and we were pretty sure he was abandoned. He was just the sweetest thing and all weekend was just loyal and well behaved. We knew if we left him there he would die of starvation or one of the local farmers would shoot him in the head (very common in that area to just kill the dogs instead of letting them starve or to try to get them to a pound-- they are in the country and no pounds around there). Brad and Amy have a farm in our area and were needing a farm dog and a herding dog like this dog-- Owen named him Lucky-- very fitting name-- would be perfect. They met Lucky and really liked him so we gave Lucky a ride back home in our RV and then Brad got him from us yesterday and I guess he is working out well. He really is a LUCKY dog!!

The other pictures are of Kevin, Mia, Cass and I in front of Grandma's house-- the house my grandfather built in the 60's. It was probably the last time we will be there before it is sold-- very sad.




We made Gingerbread houses the other night while we celebrated our Thanksgiving with Kevin's family. I cooked all day and it was a wonderful time of food, activities and wine-- great time!! This is Mia this morning before Church eating the frosting off the gingerbread house.

This was Mia the night of our Bock Thanksgiving looking at our village. She loves all the Christmas decorations. I have most of them up but still need to decorate the tree which we will do this week. We also still need to do our outside decorations. I just love this time of year and my increasing pant size is proof of that!!