Thanksgiving Week

 On Monday we hiked and we finished two books.

This one for the teens and me--
Then I went back on my word regarding reading Steinbeck and started Of Mice and Men.  It's a very painful read, but it's shorter, and the terrible decisions that have to be made are somehow more comprehensible to me . . . even though they are still incomprehensible . . .
sheesh!  Steinbeck is just so hard!

This one for the kids and me--
It marks the end of Unit 3 in Playful Pioneers 2.
.
Hike 7: Little Blue Trace

The pictures loaded backwards, so the hike story is told in reverse order.

🤷

Fort building


Changing to a game of "Pooh-leaves"



Ready for a game of Pooh-sticks!


She refuses to wear mittens, so she keeps her hands warm in her pockets.

I love his version of cold-weather clothing!

In the afternoon, the kids wrote biographical narrations about Sacajawea.

On Tuesday we took Hike 8: Cave Spring.









More fort-building



Because we finished all of our Unit 3 reading, and I didn't want to start Christmas reading until after Thanksgiving, I pulled Thanksgiving stories out of this book for our bedtime reading.


And the kids wrote biographical narrations about Lewis and Clark for school during the day.

On Wednesday, some of the kids did math because they wanted to, so I encouraged all of the kids to do some in their free time.  

Otherwise, I baked all day.

This is one group of kids slicing apples for French Apple Pie.

We did not hike, and most of the day looked like this:


In the evening, I found more Thanksgiving stories in these books:


On Thanksgiving, Sir Walter Scott took the youngest 6 kids to a Turkey Bowl with church friends.

And I cooked.

Sometimes older girls came to help.

We had a very happy day with extended family and So. Much. Food.

My sister led the family in several games, many of which were family history games with online family Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Wordle, and a baby name generator. I thought she must have spent hours loading ancestors into the programs, but then I looked it up and found that it self-generates with information from FamilySearch.org. 

On Friday, I started intense Christmas sewing while the 3 big boys went to a friend's house for a gaming party.  In the afternoon, my sister from Utah came over with some of her family, and we just chatted cozily by the living room fire for a few hours.

On Saturday, Sir Walter Scott succumbed to illness, and he spent the day in bed while I did my best to pretend I wasn't feeling sick again . . . driving in the first snowstorm, grocery shopping, sewing, meal prepping, cleaning, etc.

But by dinnertime, I gave up.  

I slept from 6:30 pm until 8:30 am the next morning.

Then I slept through most of Sunday, too.

We didn't set up our tree (it was on the schedule).
We didn't start our Christmas book advent (it was on the schedule).
We didn't start The Jesus Storybook Bible (it was on the schedule).

I still feel sick.

But not deathly so.

We'll do what we can; we'll skip what we must.

And I am Thankful that we have hot tea, Vaporub, garlic, warm blankets, and home-canned soup to get us through to feeling 100% again.

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