Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Love,  Caroline. 

I might as well have joined the black friday crowd. It's before 6 and I am wide awake. I don't know how others can sleep in on their days off. I have never been able to figure out how it's possible to get up early all week and then switch into sleeping in mode on the weekends. Maybe it's because sleeping in never existed around my house growing up. If you got to sleep in that meant Mom didn't wake you till it was almost seven. She has cursed me for life.




We spent the 4th Thanksgiving in a row on our own on the East Coast. In my perfect world, I would fly home twice a year and meet all my brothers and sisters there. August and Thanksgiving.  I love August in Eastern Washington. . . for a visit anyway. Farming and living there in August means hoeing tackweed under a hot sun, trying to keep your crops alive without a single day of rain all month, and canning produce whenever you are indoors and after doing without these activities for sometime now. . . it just doesn't sound too great.  But when you are just hanging out in people's air conditioned homes, eating their good food, and swimming most of the time the Washington life is pretty good. We always love our extended summer vacations there, and really hope that we can continue them even though Brent no longer has an entire summer off. We were pretty spoiled for 4 years. That's the way I see the dental school years. Now real life has started and will we still get to take vacations? We haven't taken a single one yet since moving here and that is a long stretch in our family.


Though I spend the weeks before Thanksgiving feeling bad for myself that we aren't meeting up with cousins and grandparents, it always turns out that we have a good time on our own. This year my children begged me to cook the entire meal and have our own feast, but I think the cook gets the biggest say and I accepted an invitation to share our feasting with two other families.  I am glad that my kids think the best kind of party is just us, but at the same time I find them quite selfish that they insist on me cooking it all. Kennon and I were hoping to run in the Portsmouth Turkey Trot, but first Savannah threw a fit that her Thanksgiving would be ruined if I was allowed to spend 1/2 the morning running instead of cooking. Then Brent threw a fit that it would cost us $40 just to run the race. 

So Kennon and I held a local 5K around our neighborhood on Turkey Day. I had big plans to hand out fliers door to door and make it a party but I never got around to planning it. . .  so it was just us. Maybe next year. I kept up with Kennon the whole time and that was enough of a win for me.  Brent didn't run because he was in recovery from three different events in the last 24 hours that did him in. First off, figuring out how to get his wife's van out of the ditch that she backed into the evening before. Second, the first basketball game he has played in weeks. And finally he spent a couple hours thanksgiving morning highlighting my hair and that is way more intense than dentistry.

I like my new hair. It's nice to have my multi-talented dentist around on his days off.

Savannah used to do this every year for Thanksgiving. I went through the costume box that I thought was packed away for another year, because Caroline insisted on feasting as a pilgrim. Camille also joined in. I wished I had an indian costume for Marcus. He even found a horse to ride and would've been cute as an indian boy. The only indian costume we had was in my size and I wasn't feeling as festive as my two girls.

Don't you think we need a big dog for Marcus? It has to be big. A small dog couldn 't hold up to his abuse. He tried to hang onto that dog all afternoon. I think it's so great because my girls were terrified of dogs when they were two. Boys are pretty awesome.

There are two Brents in our bishopric. This is Brent our Bishop.  He carved the Turkey for us. Brent (my Brent) feels pretty safe that they won't want a third. 

We finally have some friends with older kids. Savannah has endured way too many get togethers with our young Buffalo friends where her only option is hanging out with adults if she doesn't want to babysit. They played outdoors all afternoon, even once it got cold and dark. Luckily we aren't celebrating in Washington or they would all be forced to play in snowsuits yesterday. They even had a bonfire to warm up between games.