Since last we spoke our family has enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, celebrated a birthday, and put up Christmas decorations.
Thanksgiving was nice and quiet. I served the traditional turkey and trimming to the family and our guest, one of Gary's co-worker friends. We had a nice afternoon chatting about all sorts of topics.

The girls made our Thanksgiving pies. Here they are cutting out crust shapes for the tops of the pies.
The day after we celebrated Gracie's ninth birthday! Her birthday breakfast was fluffy pancakes, sausage and scrambled eggs. She requested a chocolate cake with milk chocolate frosting.

The cake decorations were a small doll-sized tea set with ladybugs on them.

Gracie received a Kimono Jenny doll from Japan. She has been asking for one of these dolls for a very long time and was so excited to finally receive this one as a gift. Gracie named her Sakura, which means 'cherry blossom.'

It didn't take long for Sakura to be at home with a makeshift kotatsu table and a lovely lunch.
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Last week we woke up to snow falling!

The girls were so excited and quickly dressed so they could go out and frolic in the flurries.

There was even enough snow to make a small snowman!

Pixie decided it was better to stay inside where it was nice and warm!
Other than all the special days we have been moving things around and cleaning up a bit. The girls and I have been going through their toys, clothes, and books and seeing what can be donated and what they want to keep. I've gone through our old magazines and books to see what we no longer really want to keep on our shelves.
This week we are going through arts and crafts supplies! It's amazing what accumulates when you are not looking.
All of our indoor decorations were up by Monday evening after Thanksgiving with the exception of our holiday village which will be put up this coming weekend.

Pixie even tried to help by fluffing up the tree skirt!
I've had bouts of crying regarding my grampers as we prepared for Christmas; the one time that was the hardest was when I pulled out our Christmas stockings and found the stocking I made Grampers years ago when he started visiting us for Christmas over 18 years ago. I've yet to watch "our" movie - "White Christmas."
Tonight Gary is relaxing by himself after a long day at work and the girls are camped out with me watching "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
Last night we watched one of our all-time favorite movies, "The Muppets Christmas Carol."
That's what's going on here at Country Roads...I'll be back soon to share some more of our favorite Christmas movies as well as some of our family traditions.