Happy Thanksgiving!

As you may or may not know, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I look forward to Thanksgiving like little kids look forward to Christmas Day. There are many reasons, but the most important is that it is the only time we all get together for the sole purpose of spending time together. Christmas has a lot of other objectives, like the right gifts, the decorations, the parties, but Thanksgiving is the casual, no-nonsense side of the holiday season- just great food and an entire day (sometimes weekend!) with our wonderful, warm family.

I hope Thanksgivings like this one will be one of Wylie's beloved memories. This year we had 20 guests for Thanksgiving, with all six grandparents (is Wylie a lucky baby, or what?!), his great-grandma Shirley and Steve, and his favorite aunts,uncles and cousins. And to put a cherry on top for Maddie- we also had our sweet little neighbor, Lauren, who is nine also.

We cooked our tails off, laughed a LOT, and Wylie enjoyed being the center of attention along with his cousins, being passed around and squeezed and loved by his entire family. One year ago Thanksgiving, we were crossing our fingers, and hoping he'd be here and join our family. This year we celebrated his first turkey day and said a few prayers of gratitude for the blessing of his adoption.

We had the joy of Adam's parents and brother Caleb staying with us for the entire Thanksgiving weekend, and got to enjoy everything from catching up to putting up the Christmas tree and having a big Patachou breakfast together (no dishes- hooray!).

I won't ever forget our first Thanksgiving as a family, and I look forward to more Thanksgivings like this one- loud and busy, with lots of laughter, and lots and LOTS of food:)

Sorry about the barrage of pictures- I just couldn't leave any on the cutting room floor:(