Thanksgiving Week

Happy Thanksgiving! This year we kept up our family tradition of serving turkey dinners at the annual Apple Cup Community Thanksgiving dinner. It was our 15th year. We started volunteering after I wrote a feature story about the event. It touched me so much I wanted to get involved too. The first couple of years we delivered meals to seniors in the community. Then, when Sam was three, we started serving. It was especially fun to watch Sam this year. Without older brothers there, he really steps up and does a mixture of taking orders, serving meals and clearing/setting tables. I enjoy watching him grow into a strong man with a good heart.

It's fun to watch Zoe too. Her first time at the event was when I was a couple months pregnant with her. The next year she was in a backpack while I worked. Before long, she was carrying pies, one at a time. We have a newspaper picture of her at two years old, carefully delivering a slice of pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream. This year, she was taking drink orders for tables of eight - in addition to pie delivery and helping carry turkey dinners. Wow! What a big, beautiful girl she is becoming.

We missed the older kids of course. It's still hard to have them gone, but it felt good to continue our family tradition at the Apple Cup, even in smaller numbers. We were grateful that grandpa and Wesley could join us too! Wesley was very handsome in a dress shirt and tie, and Grandpa always knows how to make people smile.

Now that Thanksgiving is past, I'm excited to plunge into Christmas. I'm ready to put up our tree, and most of the gifts are wrapped and ready. I'm especially looking forward to burning our advent candle, reading Christmas stories with the kids and, of course, making holiday cookies. This year I want to learn to make Scandinavian krumkake with friends Shannon and Carrie. Happily, we got a head start on the cookie baking this morning ... with a Disney touch.

Last week, Carrie came back from a vacation with her sweetie at Disney World. Knowing how much Zoe and I enjoy cookie making, she brought us back a package of gingerbread cookie mix with a Santa Micky Mouse cookie cutter. Zoe and her friend Sarah made them this morning to celebrate Zoe's 1st ever sleepover. Aren't they creative Mickeys!