Thanksgiving COVID Style

Instead of eating our Thanksgiving meal together, Mom suggested we have a pie party out in our backyard Thanksgiving Eve.

She provided multiple yummy pies and fixings.

Shivering, we gathered around...

I believe it was in the 40s that day.

Ben didn't seem to mind the cold and was just thrilled to be outside!!!

We had a grand old time!

Seriously, the pies were amazing though :)

We're glad Jo and T were in town and could join us as well!

 After the pie we turned on "On Moonlight Bay" per tradition and I prepped a bunch of food.

The next day there wasn't a whole lot to do on my part.

Andy cooked the turkey roast in the Instant pot with great success!

I know the spread doesn't look super impressive but for me this was a big deal!

Andy and I had never prepared a whole Thanksgiving meal all on our own before so I was pretty proud!

Rolls, salad, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed cheese corn, stuffing, mac and cheese and turkey and gravy. 

I had asked everyone the week before one or two things they wanted to make sure we served.  Hence the mac and cheese :)  Thank you Matt.

The kids had made a couple of pumpkin pies the week before over Zoom with the young men and young women so I had frozen one to save for Thanksgiving.   Josh also requested a chocolate cream pie so I had him make it.  I thought it was pretty fun that the kids made all the pies :)

We had a lovely meal with just our little family.

What a pleasant experience it was!

We have so much to be grateful for as a family.

Love this crew!!!

November Odds and Ends

For several Sunday evenings in a row we watched old home videos.

One of them showed Josh riding around on Andy's back as a young tot.  Andy said he bet he could still do that so Josh hopped on his back...

It didn't go too well :)

A beautiful leaf I found in our driveway...

Another evening we played charades.

Andy decided a new category should be Book of Mormon stories.

He acted out the demise of Shiz...

November usually means I'm taking pictures for our Christmas cards.

I wanted our faces up against glass...

However, those didn't end up working out too well so I had to rethink my idea.

These were next but Abby slouching down ended up not working either so I had to retake just Matt and Abby.  Blogger is giving me fits so I can't type below or move the pictures up so forgive the messy format.

Retaking Abby and Matt was comedic.  They really put on a show so I had to include some :)

       

  

   

    

     

Halloween 2020

 Ben was a monkey for Halloween although I think he ended up looking more like a little brown mouse.

I had bought a little hat and planned on putting homemade ears on the sides thinking he might keep that on better than this headband with ears that I bought, but when I tried the hat on he immediately tried to take it off...so the headband it was :)

This was Friday for school...

You can barely see his tail below...

Josh dressed up in all black with a cape but I failed to get a good picture of him :(

Halloween was Saturday.

Abby spent the day in her room with a sore throat :(

I have become lazy in my old age and don't initiate pumpkin carving like I used to.  Matt asked to do it though so I conceded.

He worked hard on it and then Andy helped him finish it up.

I think it turned out pretty great!

A couple of Matt's friends asked if he could go around the neighborhood with them so he had to hurry and find a costume...of course he chose Andy's T-Rex from a couple of years ago.

Apparently it fogged up so badly that he could hardly see where he was going :)

I think a lot of people decided not to participate in trick or treating this year because of COVID.

I didn't have a problem with it so Josh handed out candy.  We only had about half the amount of trick or treaters that we normally do.

Matt said there were a lot of houses that didn't have lights on or just had signs that said something like "See you next year".

It was kind of weird...like this whole year has been :)

Andy took a great shot of their pumpkin all lit up!

(It rolled off the counter inside and got a split lip :)