Thanksgiving Eve 2007

Getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner? Here is the produce stand where I purchased some of my ingredients for tomorrow's feast. Obviously, I did the bulk of my shopping in the grocery stores since her stand is a tad limited but she is the sweetest lady. She sits in the corner of our courtyard and I can see her from our kitchen window.

The month of November has been an extremely busy one for our family but we made sure to take some time during every dinner to prepare our hearts for Thanksgiving. We have loved hearing the girls' responses each night as they shared what they are thankful for. (They will get a kick out of reading their responses when they are older!)

The girls have also enjoyed reading these Thanksgiving books with us:
Thanksgiving: A Harvest Celebration (Julie Steigmeyer)
An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving (Louisa May Alcott)
If You Were ... at the First Thanksgiving (Anne Kamma)
The Thanksgiving Door (Debby Atwell)

Tomorrow, we plan to celebrate Thanksgiving with some friends and on Friday, all five of us will pile into Annalise's small preschool to watch her perform as an Indian in her school play. Hopefully, we'll also find some time to put up our Christmas decorations. Annalise has been squealing about "orr-naments" for weeks now!

We do hope you all enjoy a lovely Thanksgiving. Holidays for us are always a mixture of emotions. Mainly, joy for all the blessings God has given us, but inevitably, also a twinge of sadness as we miss you all back home.

As we slowly say goodbye to fall, here is one last autumn photo. David, Verity and Annalise are standing in front of some beautiful fall leaves and part of a castle (or fortress of some sort). Locals used it to defend themselves victoriously against the Persian Empire (can't remember the exact year).