Thanksgiving

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving has already come and gone and now we are patiently waiting for the Christmas season to arrive as well as the new year. It just doesn't seem like it should be this time of year already! Perhaps it's the fact that it hasn't been unbearably cold just yet and we don't exactly have any snow yet. Either way, time always seems to go by too quickly!

With the holidays comes crazy schedules and trying to figure out which family gatherings we will be able to attend. Being that we have quite the interesting family dynamics between Axton and I, we try to keep things fair as well as see what we can manage between attending Thanksgiving and/or Christmas gatherings. This year we made it to a total of 5 Thanksgiving get-togethers, so we felt we did pretty well! :)

We headed to Prairie City to have lunch with my step-mother's side of the family. It had been quite a while since Axton and I had seen this side of the family, so we felt it was a good idea to make it down for that one that day! That same afternoon we headed back to Des Moines to Grandma Krueger's to have a late lunch/early dinner with the Krueger side of the family. It was an eventful afternoon full of delicious food and Grandma trying to play football...definitely a memory we won't soon forget! We ended the evening by traveling up to Ames to visit Uncle Frank and enjoy some desert!

On Friday Axton and I packed up Tilly and Charlie and headed down to the farm in Leighton. The Van Gorp dinner wasn't until that evening, but we decided to head down early to help out with anything that still needed to be done, try to enjoy some outdoor time (even though it was quit cold and windy!), and plus the dogs LOVE going to the farm since they can run FREE from their leashes...until they started chasing the chickens of course! :) The Van Gorp Thanksgiving was at the Leighton Town Hall and we were able to enjoy getting together as a family and also having some 'out of town' cousins (Andrew, JT, & Kristen) there with us as well!

After getting to sleep in a little on Saturday morning, we headed to Grandma and Grandpa Van Gorp's to watch the Iowa State football game on tv while also enjoying some leftover Thanksgiving goodness and family as well. Even though ISU ended up losing, they did play some great defense! Saturday evening we headed to Oskaloosa for the Meinder's Thanksgiving at Oskaloosa Christian Grade. It was an evening of great food, great family, and some basketball as well.

We had a GREAT Thanksgiving and it's times like these that we are reminded how incredibly blessed we truly are. We have great wonderful families, and so many things to be thankful for! And it was definitely an AWESOME blessing to be able to have Axton HOME this year for Thanksgiving and to enjoy these holidays WITH him :)