Giving Thanks

Jotham's Birthday was the week before Thanksgiving.  

We made the traditional cherry pie to celebrate.

My cherry pitter had broken some years ago and I've had to jimmy-rig it to make it work and last years batch of bottled cherries were riddled with pits.  

Sometimes we'd find as many as 7-9 pits per pie.  

It had gotten so bad, that we'd started making a game out it,

The one with the most pits was the lucky winner.

That night as I served it up, I told the kids I'd gotten a new cherry pitter 

and so hopefully there wouldn't be as many pits in the pie.

Gavin was completely disappointed with my improvements

and announced, "Ah, mom!  You just took all the fun out of it!"

But not to worry, I didn't ruin it completely, Jotham, that lucky birthday boy,

 found the one and only pit in the birthday pie.  

 

 We finished the night off with a game of 

horse trivia.  His favorite.

Gavin was so excited for his Thanksgiving feast at school, 

he wanted to get all dressed up in traditional pilgrim garb.

The day before Turkey day, each of the kids made their favorite pie.

 and then later that afternoon we went tree hunting:

On our first trip the weekend before, we weren't prepared for snow 

and ended up coming home empty handed.

This time we over prepared, with snow gear, skis and snow shoes,

 but ended up finding a nice tree, a little lower in elevation

and enjoyed the adventure sans snow.

When turkey time finally arrived, we took our pies over to grandma Jo's for the feast.

Trouble at the kids table:

The big kids:

And everybody else a little rounder than when we started:

 So many pies:

Dad took the teens to the Logan temple bright and early

Friday morning to do Baptisms and then treated them to breakfast.

Of course Mark and Ashton, in true teen style ordered these ginormis 

hamburgers for breakfast - a real treat!  Thanks Grandad!

 Then the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Jotham's family 

all came into town to for the Hatch Family Christmas Party.

We shot guns, played games, enjoyed our annual talent show 

and really just had a good ole time just being together.