Thanksgiving at the Perkins'

The real celebration for the long holiday weekend began on Tuesday, when we woke up to find that school had been cancelled for a snow day. The dreams and wishes of our four children had come true! Not only an unexpected day out of school, but snow! In Portland!

Or not.

Now, I realize that our Utah loved ones are laughing at this. We chuckled a bit too :) Let me assure you that everything you see in this picture is pure ice. The snow on the road looks exactly the same as it did when Dave and I checked it at 10:30 the night before. Everything froze in place and when you live in a place that doesn't have much snow/ice removal equipment, they have to cancel everything for the safety of everyone else. The kids played hard all day and it wasn't so bad to return to school for one small day on Wednesday before beginning the holiday weekend.

It has become tradition for us to let Thanksgiving lead right into Christmas at our house. Not to overshadow Thanksgiving, but for me at least, all of those great Thanksgivingie feelings are so closely related to the Spirit of Christmas, it has become one long weekend of celebration.

We had generous offers from others to celebrate Thanksgiving with them, but had opted to stay at home and hold our little family close. It's been a rough couple of months and it was kind of healing to have a feast of gratitude here in our home. We were excited for plans for Jen, Mike, and Jacob to join us (before the State of Idaho was closed due to weather). 

This is our pre-feast buffet. In true Grandma Joane tradition, we had snacks laid out to munch on throughout the day until the time came for the real feast. And yes, those are Krispie Kremes that Dave and the two oldest brought home after the 30th Annual Ward Turkey Bowl. As if we didn't have enough junk to eat :)

The feast. Complete with way too much food for the six of us (so, lots of leftovers-yay!), the best dishes, and Spencer still in his pjs.

By the way, Justin has Aunt Jen's teeth. The permanent teeth are in, they just won't knock the baby teeth out.

On Friday, we cleaned, and just generally laid around all day. A Black Friday shopper I am not. Most of the day, when we weren't cleaning, we had family Wii tournaments. It was a great, relaxing day.

Friday evening and all day Saturday began the Christmas decorating. It can be exhausting! There are always lots of excited hands to help, for better or worse :)

As promised to our excited little ones, we were able to complete the tree decorating Saturday evening and they got to open the traditional gift to ring in the Spirit of Christmas.

Merry Christmas Season to all!