Our Thanksgiving

Ben enjoying his Thanksgiving dinner after all of us were done. Luckily he slept throught the dinner so it was a little more peaceful for everyone else.

My cute boys enjoying the beach

having fun at the beach.

Enjoying a swim in the hot tub

Grandma and Siena decorating for Thanksgiving.

We decided to try something new this year. We love love love the beach. We love our yearly trip down to North Carolina outer banks. We decided to try it for Thanksgiving time. When we came back from our trip down there in August Dave's parents said that they would like to try it with us one year. It seemed like we should try it on the off season. It was reasonably warm and just nice and peaceful there, just what we needed this Thanksgiving. We had a beautiful house right on the beach. Then the week before we went a tropical storm, I think, named Ida came and totally drenched the outer banks. Most of the homes right on the beach had water damage. We didn't find out until we were about and hour away from our beach house that we couldn't stay in the one that we rented. So they found us another one a block away from the beach. It was nice and had a good view of the ocean. We went to our first booked house just to look at it and the deck that connects the house to the beach had fallen off and was hanging off the dunes and the first floor was flooded. Definately would not have been fun to stay in. We had pretty good weather. Mostly 50's to 60's. We went to the beach daily and our young nephews thought it was perfect weather to get into the ocean, so they did. We weren't that crazy. The water was freezing! We visited a lighthouse and went and saw the Wright Brothers museum. That was actually really cool. But mostly we had awesome food and played games and puzzles and talked. It was a much needed break after the funeral. The second night Dave and Joseph made homemade past and Italian dinner. It was delicious and lasted until we had our Thanksgiving dinner. We had the whole Thanksgiving dinner there. It was delicious food and I am so grateful for all the people that cooked there. They are wonderful cooks. I hate to cook. The only thing that went wrong witht the Thanksgiving dinner at a different house that you aren't used to is that they didn't have a potatoe peeler. So Grandma and I peeled maybe 10 potatoes with sharp knives. Very tricky. Otherwise the house was good. The 5 cousins had a good time together causing trouble, collecting shells, learning how to play pool and swimming in the hot tub. Ben learned how to climb to the top bunk and scared us when we found him there all by himself. Siena taught all the boys a little too much about princesses and they are probably glad they are back home where they don't have to hear about it anymore. Brendan was very nice and would play princess and knight with her. We learned that the little crabs that we like to catch at night on the beach hibernate in the winter deep in the sand so we weren't able to catch any of those. We were excited to try it and even bought flashlights but we had fun doing the other things. It was a nice enjoyable week so thank you Grandma for taking us to the beach house. We really enjoyed it.