Thanksgiving

Canadian Thanksgiving was a little late around here, but we sure did celebrate with our little family of ours. Since we has only been back from our trip a few days when we had our Thanksgiving dinner, things we pretty simple, but we had fun.

First off, we headed to market to get a few things for dinner.

There was no shortage of gorgeous fall weather to enjoy.

Then we enjoyed all the sights and sounds of a busy market day. We love market. Seriously. With all it's colors, produce diversity, sounds, smells and tastes...it's awesome.

The kids got to pick some veggies to roast for dinner. It was unanimous - a bundle of multi-colored carrots - yum!

Then we headed home, marveling at all the golden leaves on our street, of course.

And then everyone pitched in to set the table and put up a few decorations.

The kids had decorated napkin holders the day before and were pretty excited to get to put them on the table. 

Then the kids played while we finished up making dinner. Milayla had crawled up to Atticus to give him cuddles. It was adorable and I ran to get the camera just in time for Milayla to point out that I was taking a photo. Thankfully, she did give Atticus another adorable cuddle before proceeding to devour one of their cars (I sure wish we could find her a teether that she likes).

Then it was time for a small lesson on being thankful. Daddy and Milayla were in charge of teaching us a bible lesson. They chose to teach about the 10 lepers.

Then Atticus and I were up to show our Gratitude tree that we had been working on for the last week each night at dinner.

The leaves all have something written on them that we are grateful for. We could have easily kept going when we wrote out all the leaves but we ran out of time. After all the leaves were attached we kept a pile of "apples" next to the table and each night at dinner we each shared some way that we served someone (the "fruits" of our labors).

During our little lesson we added on one last batch of apples.

And Milayla thought the apples were literal...

We will definitely be repeating the tree (or at least some version of it) next year as it really helped all of us to focus on what we have and to always be mindful of ways that we can serve others. Even the kids understood how it worked and, as adults, it really helped to remind us how simple (and easy) service can be.

Then we wrote out a few thank you cards and headed to the table for dinner.

I must say, it was a nice meal. We experimented with a couple dishes that we probably won't be doing again, but it was fun to try something new. Besides, the most important part is that we enjoyed the meal together, remembering all the incredible blessings that we have to be grateful for and there are many. I feel so blessed to have this wonderful little family. They're awesome. I love them and I feel incredibly honored to be a wife and a mother to them.