Weekly Wrap- Up: The Week we Celebrated Thanksgiving

I promised my boys they could have the week off from school.  With Thanksgiving on Thursday and our annual tree decorating day on Friday it was going to be a short week anyway and I really wanted to focus on cleaning the house, making up some family favorite recipes, and just having fun together.

Friday we had a brunch planned with our hiking group.  Each family brought a dish or two to share and we had a wonderful time visiting with one another.  The kids played games and went outside for a bit.  One of the girls we hike with made up a Dungeons and Dragon type role playing game all themed around Minecraft she brought it to play with and taught the other kids to play too.  They had a lot of fun.  We had some really yummy food to eat too and planned out some general ideas for what we wanted to do with the group for the next few months with the winter weather on it's way.

Isn't this fruit turkey just darling?  These moms are so creative. 

Ian headed off to work on Saturday and the younger two boys hung around the house playing video games.  By early afternoon Alec, myself and my husband left to go see a play.  We watched Mulan Jr; a play about the story of Mulan with a cast of children.  We had no idea when we bought the tickets that it was an all child cast but they did a phenomenal job.  It was one of the first live productions we can ever remember seeing that had an actual orchestra pit.  The costumes and scenery were great and we really enjoyed our time together. Since my husband had never seen the movie Alec asked him to watch the movie that night after dinner.

Sunday morning the boys played around the house and even outside in the rain.  The sun came out by lunchtime and we worked together to stack wood. By the time we finished it was time to get supper going and Alec asked my husband to watch Mulan 2 with him.

Since we had no schoolwork planned for Monday, the boys enjoyed a lazy morning.  We got the groceries done and Ian offered to make pancakes for everyone.  He made some dark chocolate and white chocolate chip varieties; they were quite tasty!  The boys and I watched The Bee Movie during breakfast and then worked together to clean the whole upstairs.  Ian worked on his model for a bit painting some of the parts and gluing others together.

Alec had karate Tuesday morning and we had a few errands to run afterwards.  Ian bought himself a new Lego set and spent most of the day working on putting together his new bus as well as modifying his police boat into a three decker yacht complete with Lego bathroom.  The younger two boys spent a couple hours outside playing in the cool sunshine.  We worked together to clean most of the downstairs and watched Lego Batman during dinner.

Lego bathroom (the yellow ring is the toiler.  The faucets with blue under them are the sink and the faucets near the red base are part of the shower)

We had plans to meet up with our hiking group on Wednesday but woke to pouring rain.  We cleaned the basement and the kitchen and then set to work making some yummy desserts for Thanksgiving.  Alec and I made a few mini trifle desserts and then I made a chocolate chip pecan pie. Ian and I played a few games of rummy and rummikub.

Since my husband had Thursday off for Thanksgiving he talked the boys into working together to take down our climber/swing set.  They each got a few tools and set to work dismantling the whole thing while the turkey was cooking.  Alec was not thrilled that we were taking down the swing set but the boys rarely use it and we need to get some equipment in behind it to take down a very large tree that has been steadily shedding limbs in the wind and rain this fall.  Alec and I took a break from working on the swing set to go and cook the rest of the meal while Evan helped set the table.  We sat down to a huge turkey dinner with all the trimmings around noon and then Evan, Ian and my husband had a huge Nerf gun war before heading back outside to finish the job we started. We wrapped up our day with a nice fire and watching Elf.