Schrag Thanksgiving

Last week we put our house to the test and hosted Ben's entire family for Thanksgiving! The house passed with flying colors and we had a wonderful time.

Tim and Sue came early in the week and got to attend Grandparent's Day in Noah's classroom. 

Aunt Sara arrived next and she got to enjoy/endure a lot of quality time with Noah and Levi.

Sara dubbed Levi "Sticky Paws" years ago and the name stuck and it's strikingly accurate. :-)

We played several rounds of Quarkel,

some games were enjoyed, others ended in tears...

Our Thanksgiving dinner was good - really good. We cooked and baked collectively and the results were yummy.

We enjoyed a long walk out in the country - and even Mr. Otto came along to enjoy the adventure (a far cry from his usual Chicago adventures!).

We found animal parts!

So gross and so cool, all at the same time!

The boys had a wonderful time with each of their aunts and uncles. We're all together only once (maybe twice) a year, so we do our best to soak it all up.

Levi had a fantastic time tossing popcorn for Josh to catch in his mouth - it's great to see and hear Levi laugh really hard.

Friday we hosted Tim's sister's family, all together we were 18 plus a baby! We feasted on rice & beans and salad - another fantastic meal!

Here we all are! Levi's wearing Sue's glasses...just because...? :-)

They are such rascals, sometimes.

The boys, Lia and I all learned to play Farkel. There were some seriously intense games - in this one Sara and Levi teamed up, Sara as the "brains" Levi as the "luck."

And it worked! They ended the game with an enthusiastic victory dance and lots of laughter.

Saturday morning was fence building morning.

And Saturday afternoon, since it was incredibly nice outside, was Christmas tree cutting time! We took Sue along to help us out and we found just the right tree. Noah gave sawing a try, but soon turned the saw over to me.

And then we worked together to haul the tree to the barn.

After the tree got a good shake to get rid of loose needles we headed for home!

We did so many fun things, had so many good laughs together and ate so much good food! The time flew by and now it's hard to believe that a whole week has gone by already. We were happy to host and it is not lost on us that everyone else spent significant resources to travel to our farm, that's humbling and we appreciate it.