Thanksgiving...

It's Thanksgiving.  And for our family, that means waking up to a little Thanksgiving football with the amazing students and leaders in our youth group.  Well, the amazing students and leaders in our youth group that are willing to get up at 8:00am for our annual Turkey Bowl.  

It was a fun morning.  It was extra fun, partly because of this amazing guy.  Two and a half weeks ago, he had a major surgery to remove a cancerous tumor on his lung.  Today, he is tumor free and cancer free and the prayers he told me about to be able to come and play in the Turkey Bowl were most certainly answered.  

It was also extra fun to have this beautiful woman with us.  She's one of the fantastic leaders in our Sr. High Youth Group and we love her a lot.  A few weeks ago, she lost her home to Hurricane Sandy.  It was devastating, but she has courageously continued to move forward.  

It was the perfect morning for a friendly game of flag football.

Many great plays were made and everyone had a great time.

Especially this guy.  When it comes to football, he's a fan.  

 A huge thanks to everyone who joined us this morning!  

We love you all

And we love your silly faces too.

After football, we came home to relax.  

We were even blessed to have a good friend join us for the morning.  

We enjoyed homemade cinnamon rolls.  

And the girls had a blast playing dress up with one of Ellee's awesome birthday gifts.  

I absolutely loved hearing the girls play pretend with their dress up paper dolls.  Conversation was sprinkled with "Pretend that..." and it brought such joy to my heart to hear the chatter of such sweet little girls.  

Side Note to my friend Amber:  The blond Barbie in the sassy pink dress and tall boots was lovingly named after you.  

As with most people's Thanksgiving days, ours was also highlighted with super delicious foods.  My apple pie turned out perfectly.

And I also whipped up a batch of everyone's favorite green beens.

This year however, we made a command decision to forgo the traditional bird, in favor of it's smaller and juicier cousin.  After talking with Jer about the fact that neither of us are really big fans of turkey, we opted to break traditions and eat what we really liked.  This translated into a nice Costco chicken for the kids (who were in favor of eating something with a "drumstick").

And it then translated into a couple of nice, juicy steaks for Jer and I.  Ellee helped Daddy cook them and they were awesome.  It should also be noted, that Ellee is most certainly her Daddy's girl, as evidenced by their love for the same basketball team, and their matching cozy pants that support that love.

I'm most certainly looking forward to the rest of our weekend.  It's been a busy fall, and the next few days were be spent enjoying the vacation, tackling this stack of fun and just being together.  I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!  

And finally, I just wanted to share briefly and ask for many, many prayers for the family of our dear friend, Gary Tuttle.  Yesterday, we devastatingly learned that he passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly.  We have known Gary and his family ever since we moved to Eastport.  We were blessed to know and to build good friendships with three of his wonderful kids throughout the years.  His wife is one of my beautiful friends as well.  Gary was a wonderful man.  He was known around our small town, for his love and knowledge of antiques, but mostly for his great love for the Lord.  Gary was an elder at our church.  He knew the Bible so well and was a great teacher. Jeremy and I have so many good memories of Gary and he will be dearly missed.  Please lift up his family in prayer as they grieve the loss of this great man.