Catch-up

Once again, I'm playing catch-up on the blog. The past couple days I have had a huge pain in the neck--literally. I was fine Sunday morning and then as soon as I walked into Justin's Sunday school class where I was going to help out, my neck and shoulder seized up. The idea of working with 20-30 5/6 year olds must've been more than my neck/shoulder could handle. It was killing me for 2 days, and sitting at a computer for any length was almost unbearable. I'm feeling better today, although now am sitting with ice and heat packs.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. We had dinner at our house. My mom and my brother and sisters and all the sister/brother in-laws and cousins came over. We've grown into quite the family, and it's always a full house when we're all together. We also had tons of food as usual and didn't even begin to eat a majority of it. Our staples are of course, turkey (I roasted one and my mom did a smoked turkey breast), stuffing, mashed potatoes, Sara's sweet potato praline casserole, green bean casserole, Marcie's fruit salad, rolls and you can't forget the jellied cranberry sauce out of a can. Then of course after stuffing yourself on that, there's dessert. No one was actually very hungry for dessert, although Hannah did eat two pieces of Grandma's upside down pumpkin pie. It was a great day with the family, and even though it's always kinda crazy during the day, and I don't take a lot of time to really stop and think about what I'm thankful for then, as I reflect on it after all the craziness, I realize how totally blessed we are. I am so grateful to the Lord for everything that he has provided us even beyond what we need.

Gathered around the food to pray

All of us together

The kids made little oreo turkeys, which they promptly ate.

After cleaning up from Thanksgiving, it was time for the next holiday adventure and getting a Christmas tree. After missing a year or two with our friends, the Goves, we reinstated the annual Christmas tree hunt with them. We went to a tree farm to find the "perfect" tree. It turned out to be a great day. It was foggy, but that provided a cool backdrop to the hillside full of trees. Thankfully, it wasn't raining like it was horribly last year when we found our tree and cut it down in record time. We found a tree really close to the car, which Dale was thankful for, because I usually like to wander all over the hillside to find a tree that he has to carry quite a ways to the car. Dale got the tree set up that night, and then the onslaught of nonstop begging to decorate the tree by Hannah and Justin began. We did decorate the tree Monday night and did more decorating last night. Right now, the house looks like a Christmas store exploded in it. I love having the decorations up, but I really dislike the process of putting them up. I will be glad when it's up and the half dozen rubbermaid tubs that store the decorations are put back out in the garage. Here are some pics from getting our tree. I will have to post pics of the decorated tree later.

Hope you all are getting in the Christmas spirit and enjoying this last month of 2008.

This is Owen's new smile

Hannah and Gabby inspecting a little tree

Justin and Owen heading off to find a tree

All the young Lough/Gove kids with the exception of Owen

The Lough family and our tree