Thanksgiving in Dandridge

The Girls- Thanksgiving 2014

Time for our annual pilgrimage to Mom's house for Thanksgiving!  We grabbed some Chick-fil-A on Tuesday night and left Roanoke around 8:15 (yes, p.m.  Are you sensing a travel theme?) to surprise Mom and Bubba with our earlier-than-planned arrival. Or to hope that Willa would sleep. Or maybe because I love rolling in to tiny little downtown Dandridge late at night, with its sleepy street lit up with its Christmas wreaths. It feels so homey, even though this is only their second Thanksgiving there. I guess the saying is true, that home is where your mama is. I pray my girls feel that way when they're 30 years old. :)

Here we come!

Harper in her Douglas Lake hat with Marmie

And boy did my mama have a house full. My brave Bub made the five hour trip down on her own again, and Mom and Butch's good friends and former neighbors the Cowarts came in on Tuesday as well. We have loved getting to know them over the past 5 or 6 years. Butch made it in on Wednesday, so then we were just missing our Sweeten crew. I sure missed laughing out loud, staying up too late, and shopping til we dropped with my sweet sister. We have some catching up to do when we are together over the Christmas break, so beware husbands and MarMar!  Ha.

We played a gazillion games (Phase 10, Play Nine, Dutch Blitz, Uno), made crafts, and ate too much food. It was delightful. ;) Olivia brought supplies for the kiddos to make handprint and footprint turkeys, and they were adorable. I look forward to putting them out each year and adding it to our (sad, limited) Thanksgiving decorations. It was so thoughtful of her to include my girlies with her Jacob.

 

 

 

 

Mom and Butch's Dandridge neighbors joined us for Thanksgiving. (Sensing another theme? If you are or ever have even a neighbor of theirs, you will likely end up at our thanksgiving table. Ha. There's always room!)  We had way. too. much food with way. too. much butter. In just the two dishes I contributed, there were two sticks of butter. And one of them was a salad. Impressive, huh?  We didn't have our usual lunchtime feast, and instead had a candlelight dinner. My little Marsha Stewart had it feeling so warm and festive.

 

 

We even managed to get a group photo before the turkey coma set in!

Ok, no really.  We did.  

 

Reading with MarMar after dinner

Trying out cool whip

More Thanksgiving craft fun

There was no Black Friday craziness this year, but Sam and I did venture out for a little afternoon window shopping downtown. It was nice to browse the little shops and drink a coffee together. 

We even bought a little dish towel at The Maxwell House that says, "Beware of the Free Range children."  Those two little barefooted babies of ours are much more "free range" than I ever thought I would have. I always imagine that I'd have tidy little prisspots, but I'm so thankful for the outdoorsy little country girls I received instead. They run barefoot, they play outside every day that's above freezing, that grab every animal/insect/reptile that will stay still long enough. So, I'm sure those who come to our house know there are "free range children" at our house long before seeing the fair warning on our dish towel in the kitchen. 😊

This week is always one of my most favorites of the whole year. And it was again, this Thanksgiving 2014. 

Our Thankful Tree

Thanksgiving so often gets lost in the mix between Halloween and Christmas, but we are trying to change that a bit this year.  I didn't really decorate for Halloween, but we've been doing some little crafty things to remind us to be thankful, this month and always.

When I was looking at some Christmas things at Pier 1, I saw this cute tree and thought it would make a perfect "Thankful Tree."  In the Thanksgiving section of party supplies at Target, they had some simple but festive little place cards that I thought would work for our thankful "tags."  We punched some holes, and used some fall ribbon to finish them off and hang them on our tree.

Each day, I have been asking Harper something that she wants to tell God thank you for.  At first, it was kind of hard to describe what being "thankful" means, because it keeps going back to other words that she doesn't fully understand like appreciate and gratefulness.  But, just because she may not fully understand the concept does not mean we aren't going to practice it.  One of the things I most hope to develop in my kiddos is a grateful heart.  They are so. so. blessed.  Spoiled.  Fortunate.  I want them to know that, and to live that in humility, so if it takes some time to explain thankfulness with a should-be Christmas tree and some place cards, so be it.  

I have loved hearing her little answers.  Some that you would expect from a four-year-old:  tv, music, her favorite blankie.  But, also some surprisingly deep answers:  that God loves us all the time, that Jesus died on the cross for us.  And that has to be what is at the root of her gratefulness because there will be times that she doesn't want to praise Him.  And hopefully these little exercises in thankfulness will train her up to know that even when she doesn't have a heart full of praise, she can look around and pick out the blessings, and choose to rejoice in those.  

"Enter His gates with Thanksgiving in your heart.  Enter His courts with Praise." 

A Baseball Shower for Baby Alston

Beautiful Mama to Be

"I have prayed for this child, 

and the Lord has granted what I ask of Him." 

1 Samuel 1:27

Sometimes it still amazes me that I met Corrie when she was 17 years old.  I have seen her play college basketball at Radford and watched as she met and fell in love with her husband (they started dating after our wedding!).  I've missed her while she lived abroad, and been thankful over and over again for the calm, sweet presence she is in our family.  I had the privilege of helping host her bridal shower over five years ago, and oh what an honor to stand by her as she said I do.  So, fast forward five years, and now she and Jeremy are expecting a little BOY whom they've decided to name Alston Fields Cromer.  Of course I wanted to celebrate Corrie as she becomes a mama and this precious little guy.

Baby Alston's nursery is an All-American Baseball theme which sounded like a great idea for her shower.  This little guy is not just any little guy; he's the first little guy in the Fertitta family.  Why not go all out with a super boyish theme?  Corrie is a loved lady, so it's no surprise that she is having a total of four showers.  You read that right--four showers!  I figured she would be enjoying plenty of sweet baby blue events, and so I decided to roll with her nursery's navy and red baseball scheme for the 40 people gathering to welcome her Little Slugger.

In planning for her shower, I started out by finding invitations I loved on Etsy.  Of course.  And lucky for me, the shop offered a party pack with games and decor as well.   I enjoyed mixing things I found at local stores, some DIY items and fresh flowers (red and white mums), with the premade party decor that came with the Etsy package and just needed printed at my Staples Copy Center.

Having a little fun while hosting

The shower was held on September 6 at Green Ridge Baptist Church,  The Fellowship Hall is pretty large and could have easily held double the number of people we had invited for the shower, so I didn't want it to feel empty.  The balloon 'stands' placed on the food table were such an easy way to fill a big place. I just blew up balloons (no helium), twist them together, ran a dowel rod through the middle of the cluster, and dropped in down into a vase filled with baseballs. They were easy to make ahead and were done in 5 minutes-- unless you're Corrie reading this and if so, they took hours and hours and hours of thoughtful work...   :)

 

I am not usually a game person, but knew we needed to mix in a few activities, so I used three of the games provided by the party pack from Etsy, but made a few modifications.  To serve as an icebreaker, we played a team version of the game of "What's in Mommy's Purse." I divided up the room into two teams (red or blue), depending on the color of ribbon at your table's centerpiece.  It was a lot of fun to see everyone race to find the often random item we called out, getting a point for their team each time.  I will definitely use this game for future showers, as I had several ladies that aren't moms comment on how they enjoyed having a game that they could wholeheartedly play along with, unlike so many baby games that are based on one's knowledge of babies or motherhood. In the end, the blue team won the great prize of headed to the food table first. 

Cute cardboard letters from Jo-Ann's, spray painted in "Oxford Blue"

  

Speaking of food, determining the food for the shower was one of the things I lost the most sleep over!  I saw so many cute birthdays and couples showers using a concession stand idea and serving hot dogs and cracker jacks, but since this was already a pretty different baby shower, I wanted to stick with more traditional shower fare.  Since I wasn't doing baseball themed food, I thought it would be fun to at least give each item a baseball related name, so in case you're looking to do the same, here's what I came up with:

Baseball Baby Shower Menu

• Home Plate Pimento Cheese Mini Sandwiches
• Double Play Veggie Dippers
• Full Count Fruit Kabobs
• Coach's Chips and Dip
• Extra Innings Deviled Eggs
• Curve (meat) Balls
• Batter Up Buffalo Dip
• Champion Cheese and Crackers
• Pop Fly Pepperoni Rolls
• Shortstop Spinach Dip
• Wooden Bat Chocolate Dipped Pretzels
• Little League Lemonade
• Strikeout Sweet Tea

Patra, Grandmother (my grandmother-in-law), and Susan (my mother-in-law) having fun during introductions

Despite Corrie's enormous mound of gifts (which took up not one gift table, but two), we managed to keep things running smoothly and finished in the two hour time table I had mapped out.  There were a lot of smiles, a lot of (happy) tears, and lots of love and support shared, so I hope that at the end of the day, Corrie and Jeremy know just how loved they are, and just how excited we are to meet Baby Alston!

Hope Alston Fields is ready for this crazy bunch!