Thanksgiving break begins!

Thanksgiving week is upon us! This year we're excited to have company—Daddy's sister Emily and Katharine flew out from Utah to spend the week out in Georgia (Emily drove from Idaho to fly out from Utah). Auntie Emily's kids each selected a toy to send for our youngest four. Gavin sent a Minecraft puzzle for Benjamin, which you can see people working on below:

I actually rather enjoy doing puzzles and we did several when we first moved here, but then we got a cat ...and learned that cats and puzzles don't work very well together. But Auntie Emily loves doing puzzles, just like Grandma did. And Maren apparently enjoys puzzles as well. 

The kids had fun working on this puzzle with Emily. We put the whole thing together this evening and then took it apart so we could do it again. 

Puzzles stress me out because of all the pieces that can go missing (and sometimes do go missing), but I'm trying to train myself to let go of things like that.

Rachel and Miriam had mutual this evening. Miriam gave a tutorial on how to make cranberry sauce, one of their leaders gave a tutorial on how to make mashed potatoes, and another leader helped the girls practice various ways to fold napkins. So we're expecting big things on Thanksgiving!

Unfortunately, this means that we (Rachel, Miriam, and I) missed seeing Katharine altogether. She hadn't gotten very much sleep the night before so was feeling tired and went to Grandpa's house to get ready for bed. But Emily hung out until the puzzle was finished, so we at least got the tail end of Emily's visit.

It should be a fun week!