The girls only had two days of school this week!  On Tuesday, the young ones got to do Thanksgiving activities!  Cali and Chey made those cute turkeys and Bethany got to have an entire feast!  --complete with pilgrim hats!  Fun times in elementary school!

That evening my mom and dad came to town!  Yay!  They came for Thanksgiving and we got to have them until Friday afternoon.  It was so fun!  Tuesday night Savannah's boss sponsored a movie night for all his employees and their families.  I needed to go to YW with the other older girls, so Savannah took Grandma and Cheyenne and Calianne and Bethany.  They got to see a pre-showing of Frozen, the new Disney movie.  A great time was had by all!

On Wednesday, we relaxed and visited, and Calianne and Mariah helped me make some pies!  That evening we went back to the movie theatre, this time with the older girls, myself, and Grandma and we watched Catching Fire, since we've all read it, don't you know!  It was tons of fun (though it was missing the happy ending that I'm sure they enjoyed the night before)!

Thursday was Thanksgiving!  It was at my house this year!  Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik came over to help us celebrate, too.  While we were making the fixins, the girls made a chain of all the things for which they are thankful.  It was pretty long!

We had dinner soon after that -- early afternoon, of course!  It was cozy around the table but we enjoyed being together!  (Sorry the picture isn't very good!  I cut out a lot of people!)

That night Grandma and Grandpa Gazdik had us over to celebrate Mariah's birthday which was the very next day!  They decorated so cute just like they always do!  It's so fun!  For goodies, we had the option of cake or pie!

Mariah had a little helper!

My mom gave Mariah this locket that used to belong to her grandmother Marion.  Mariah's middle name is Marion and my mom's name is Marion so it was pretty special!

The next day was Friday and it was Mariah's 13th birthday!  Yes, we officially have four teenage girls in our house!  It's pretty exciting!  We got her just one present this year and gave it to her that morning.  She was pretty excited.  We love her to pieces and are so glad that she came to live in our home!  She is an awesome girl!

My mom and dad had to leave soon after that.  We all had turkey sandwiches first, though.  Yum!!  I'm so glad they came.  It was such fun to spend time with them.

To console ourselves, we went to the tree lot and picked out our Christmas tree!  It was pretty fun. The funny thing about tree lots is that the trees look much smaller on the lot than they actually are in your home! 

Our lives are pretty busy, though, so we didn't get around to decorating until Sunday evening.  Ben kept saying, "Mom!  Let's 'grate the tree!  We need to put on the 'grations!"  It was very hard for him to wait, but he made it!  Savannah worked until almost midnight at Funfinity Friday and Saturday nights.  Christmas is a busy time at toy stores, don't ya know!  Grandma Gazdik took Megan and Mariah shopping for some birthday clothes on Saturday morning and got them some really cute stuff!  Then they got to go help Grandma decorate her tree!  Fun times!

Sunday was lovely with church and meetings and choir practice and then a fun visit from our past neighbor, Jennie Komp!  Sometime after all that, we did decorate our tree.  Christmas will be so fun!