Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving was a little unorganized this year!  We were planning on just doing it with our little family.  It felt strange to not have company here and we were a little bummed to have such a quiet house.  Then Elaine called Tuesday night and invited us out to their place.  Sure!  We divided up the food: I made apple pie, chocolate mousse pie, broccoli salad and rolls.  We left early Thursday morning and arrived just in time for the boys to go out hunting for a bit.  Elaine and I cooked while the kids that stayed behind played.  We also were able to meet Mason for the first time, Grace's little boy.  He is adorable and I loved my snuggle time with him!  There were no pheasants to be found.  However, we did see Blue and Gandolf.  We took them to the ranch a few weeks ago to have a ranch life.  

It was a small group of just 10 of us and it was great!  The food was delicious as usual and we enjoyed ourselves!  After eating, we watched a movie and shopped all the Black Friday ads.  The Peters' were headed to North Platte EARLY in the morning to help Nate at his store so I was on my own to shop in Scottsbluff.  Ella had a loose tooth and Grace LOVES to pull teeth.  So she worked on Ella's loose bottom tooth for a while and it finally came out!  She was a happy girl and looked forward to the tooth fairy visiting...after she took the tooth to school for her tooth  necklace from her teacher.

I was a little sad to leave at 5:00 am by myself to shop.  Obviously, shopping with girlfriends is much more fun!  However, it worked out great and I just buzzed in and out of stores and arrived home by 2:00 with nearly all of my Christmas shopping done!  It was fantastic and I saved a lot of money doing Black Friday.  I think the best find was a new coat for Ella that retailed for $85 at Herbergers and only paid $18.  It wasn't a Christmas gift but it was the best deal of the day.  I am not a big soda drinker at all....but Sonic had to come to the rescue with some Vanilla Coke at the end of shopping.

We are so thankful for friends and family!  We we blessed to have those friends who have become our family here in Nebraska.  We were able to facetime with all of my family at Mom and Dad's new house in Spokane.  Everyone was there except for us.  I was so happy they could all be there but still a little sad that we weren't.  It is just too hard to travel that far in the winter across snow ridden states.  We sure love everyone and miss seeing them more often!  Matt's family gathered at the Nitta's and we missed them too!

Happy Thanksgiving!