Thanksgiving 2016

November 1 marked two years of living in Boroughbridge for us.  That is very hard to believe!  When it comes to celebrating important holidays away from home and family, we are continually grateful for the surprising ways God shows grace and kindness to us.  This year's Thanksgiving gift came in the form of three special visitors from home.

How have they not been a blessing to us?  It would be hard to think of one way.  They have loved and played with my kids, bringing joy to their little hearts.  They have supported all my Thanksgiving meal plans chopping, washing, cleaning, and decorating.  As a small token of our appreciation we plan to treat them to some of the best scenery Yorkshire has to offer today by driving into the Dales. Each time we go on an outing of some kind in the Yorkshire Dales we look at each other and say: Why don't we come here more often?  Things like work and school and daily responsibilities seem so small compared to enjoying such beauty.

This year I thought about how the first Thanksgiving marked the celebration of God's grace and provision in the lives of English pilgrims and Native Americans and then smiled because we native Americans also have much to be thankful for in the English friends we have made who have welcomed us and helped us adjust to life in this new world in which we live.

Katie helped the kids with some traditional Thanksgiving crafts, and I read them the story of Squanto. They're working hard here on the infamous hand turkey.

There are more pictures, of course, but we are out the door for an adventure today.  KJ has taken the day off work, and it is a field trip day for the kids, so we must seize the sunlight while we can!

November, the month of Thankfulness

The following post was originally written three years ago this week.  I'm pulling it back up and sharing again in case you're like me and found yourself wanting a leaf stencil for another fall related project with your kids.  2013 was the year we began our first Thankful banner, and as I was asking Ella to create some colorful leaves out of construction paper for us I suddenly remembered I'd saved these stencils from three years ago.  They're nothing fancy, but they do the job.

Going around the table every night in November sharing at least one thing we're thankful for is one of my favorite things we do.  I can't do without this transitional month of Thanksgiving before the harried pace of December comes.  What's on your thankful list as we near the year's end?  I'm predicting Pokemon makes the leaf banner at our house at least once this year.

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Are there any other mothers out there who have sometimes felt like they weren't good mothers because they didn't do "crafts" with their kids?  For some reason, to sit down and color or organize opportunities to paint, create, or otherwise make something "crafty" epitomized being a good mom to me.  Maybe it's because I don't consider myself a natural crafter?  It's all kind of ridiculous, and I think I'm growing out of feeling like that, though it didn't stop me from feeling kind of proud of myself for doing a craft with Ella Saturday morning. ;)

I saw this glittery leaf project on Pinterest one night and thought it was pretty, and it made me excited to use glitter.  I also thought the kids would enjoy a glitter experience.  Who doesn't love glitter???  I was strangely looking forward to a big glittery mess.

The original crafters said they used a bag of artificial leaves from the Dollar Tree, which I was unable to find, so I ended up using Photoshop to create a template that I printed out on cardstock and used as a stencil.  You're welcome to download it and use it if you have any leaf projects up your sleeve this fall.

Ella and I traced and cut until we felt like we had enough, and then came the fun part:  glue and glitter.

We experimented with different ways of decorating the leaves.  Ella had the good idea of coloring them first so there was still some color showing through the glitter.  Some leaves got more glitter than others, but I don't think you can really mess it up.  Ella was hesitant at first about completely covering her leaves with glitter, but it grew on her.

 Pretty, Pretty

Part way through the project I decided not to worry about making a perfect banner for decor and to instead merge it with the desire to keep a record of the things we're thankful for this month.  I really liked the results:  a little bit of shiny and a whole lot of thankfulness in the heart listening to my kids give thanksgivings.  Maybe a little laughter listening to their thanksgivings, too.

I failed to take a picture of James' first thanksgiving with my good camera.  Here it is on Instagram.  I love that boy.

Thanksgiving in Boroughbridge

I know everyone is fully into Christmas now, but I'm dragging behind with blogging.  We are still working out what our daily and weekly routines look like, and any free time I've had has been spent in organizing and finding things for our new home and after weeks of upheaval, trying to give the kids a more regular school schedule.  They were just thrilled that we had school every day last week.  But then, James actually was pretty happy about it.  He hasn't yet learned that children are obligated to complain about school.  Yesterday he said cheerfully, "I like school!"

Like so many of you, I'm sure, we had two Thanksgivings this year, beginning on Thursday with the de la Hoyde family.  You can feel introduced to Laura now!

 

We had a really lovely evening, in which I asked Del to do the honors (or should I say honours?) of reading to the kids about the first Thanksgiving.  The kids were pretty into it.

 



We were only six days into living in Capstick Cottage at this point, so things are not looking quite so bare now.  But you really don't need a fully decorated house or pictures in all of your frames to have a thankful heart, and our hearts were feeling really thankful.  It was one year ago last week that we had our first Skype call with Del.

I think KJ is selling the virtues and benefits of the kids' table in the above picture.  Only well-behaved boys and girls get to sit at the kids' table.  Otherwise you have to sit with the adults where the conversation will be very boring indeed.

 



You don't need pictures in your frames, just lots of food and a place to sit, right?  And candles.  Don't forget the candles.

We actually had two little boys for whom blowing out the candles was the highlight of the night.



On Saturday we had three other families from our church over for dinner.  Sweet Potato Casserole covered in marshmallows was probably the dish which caused the most surprise for everyone.  "So this is a main dish?"

Children at Fountains Abbey, Musings, + Thanksgiving

I haven't done much up-to-the-minute updating, have I?  We are at the end of our second full week in Boroughbridge, and it has felt a little more settled than the week before.  The kids and I did more schoolwork this week than the previous week, though we're still not up to a full load.  We've acquired a car that I've successfully driven on several occasions (That feels like a big accomplishment.), and we've picked up some odds and ends to have ready for our move-in day, which should be this coming Friday.  We've got a big day out in Leeds planned for tomorrow with the hope of acquiring phones and placing an order at IKEA.

In the way of pictures, I have some from an outing we took on our 4th day in England.

We drove here to Fountains Abbey in the amount of time we could drive across town to Target.  It was a pretty good living history lesson, wouldn't you say?  I think they started building it in 1132.

It was also a good place for the kids to get to know the de la Hoyde children, who they are becoming fast friends with.

The first few days here were actually quite sunny and beautiful.  I love the light here; it's already low in the sky by afternoon, and I think it just looks a little lovelier in the Northern Hemisphere, but maybe I'm biased in general toward the beauty of this place.

With the combination of damp and cold and spending more time outside, my kids' clothes have never been muddier.  I think I've accepted this as a new normal state of things. 

With so much learning and change going on, I'm finding it hard to know where to begin in writing about it.  My heart feels very full.  I am daily thankful for Grace Church Boroughbridge and how they have welcomed us and loved us and encouraged us daily.  They make it easier to feel at home here.  I'm thankful for our church back home, who send us messages of encouragement and let us know they miss us.  Do you know that in 2 weeks here, we've already received mail from Alabama twice?  Through you we feel God's love, and it fills our hearts to the brim during this month of Thanksgiving.

Isn't that Autumn sunshine lovely?  And speaking of Thanksgiving, I've decided to attempt hosting a couple of Thanksgiving dinners the week after we move in.  I've never been in charge of turkey before.  Feel free to send me all your turkey tips.  And I'm definitely thinking these little English children need to make hand turkeys and color pictures of pilgrims and Indians, wouldn't you agree?  

Santa Fe

We're home again from an absolutely beautiful and relaxing time at Lake Santa Fe.

It has been 3 years since we made the trip as a family to visit KJ's Florida family; the last time all four of us made the drive James was 3 months old.  James ages 1-3 is probably enough of an explanation as to why there have been no long road trips for us in the past few years.  James at 4 was amazing, though.  We made the 8-hour drive WITHOUT PORTABLE DVD PLAYERS.  I call that winning.  I am thankful for God's grace in a peaceful trip.

Thanks to the graciousness of the Winter's neighbors, almost the entire family was able to come and stay comfortably with their own bedrooms and bathrooms, cribs and toddler beds.  It was such a blessing.

Our Home for the Week

I know I have family anxious to see pictures, but there are many errands to be run today, so I only have time to share pictures from the first day.  My youngest brother would groan if he read that statement.

 

The cousins in KJ's family have always been close, and it was fun to watch the second cousins have so much fun together.  Ann Elizabeth called Ella, "My Ella" all week, while Ella called her, "AE."

Sterling and James played a lot of Mario together, as well as building secret hideouts and playing with cars.

The big kids played a lot of games.

 They're not being unsociable, just playing a game against one another on their phones.

There was a lot of incredible food, compliments of Aunt Vicki, and lots of adorable babies.

There was also a lot of good conversation, and I'm glad Ella got to make memories with extended family.  She really enjoyed being around everyone.

And evening and morning were the first day.  I don't want to embarrass them when they're older, so no pictures of this online, but there was a big jacuzzi tub full of kiddos and bubbles at the end of the day.  They were loving it.