A Wonderful Thanksgiving

All of the unmarried children in the family, John's roommate Jie, and  Paul and I traveled from our various locations to Champaign, IL, to spend Thanksgiving Day with David and Kelsea in their beautiful new home.  We arrived in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning and were all able to stay until very early Sunday morning.  Here are some pictures that hopefully capture a bit of all the fun we had together!

A beautiful setting right inside their front door

This is the one giant sled they made.
We gave it to David and Kelsea as a
memento celebrating all the years of
making and selling sleds. The idea originated
from David's Royal Ranger's class which we
estimated was in 1998.  Wow! Our family has
really profited from it!  Plus a fun memory for all!

Daniel and Timothy had already built Christmas sleds getting ready to sell when they returned home. In fact tonight (Monday) was their first night out to sell, and it was quite successful!  The layer of new fallen snow probably helped to get people into the Christmas mood!

Kelsea and David had been working hard before we arrived to have everything all prepared for Thanksgiving Day.  

All the siblings that were present

Kelsea working hard

Master carver of the turkey and ham!

How do you like Dad's new pants
bought just in time for the occasion?

As you can see, the food looked beautiful.  And it even tasted better than it looked.  It was fantastic!

Our gracious host and hostess!

It was truly an added blessing to have John's new roommate,
Jie, with us for the weekend.  He is so easy-going and very
eager to be involved in everything we did.  He started at Epic
the same time that John did.  We thank God for such a roommate!

We enjoyed the wonderful meal, and after clean-up, we went for a very nice walk together out in the dark.  On returning, we enjoyed some excellent desserts that Kelsea had prepared. I wish I had taken a picture of the beautiful pecan pie she made!  We all listened to a recording done some years back of Guy Doud, Molder of Dreams.  It was very meaningful.  










On Saturday morning to go with our brunch, Esther made some delicious cinnamon rolls. 

Before breakfast

After Breakfast!  The picture speaks for itself!

Pool was much enjoyed over the weekend.
Here are 2 teams of 2 in hot competition!
Can you tell?

The pool shark himself...

...and his determined partner!

This guy is cool...He is not worried a bit!

Dad's partner...No wonder Dad had no worries!

David did instruction along the way too.

Look at this action shot!!

Later that evening another game in progress...

This time they were listening to Christmas carols. Joseph doesn't know that I got a shot of him impersonating Elvis singing I'll Have a Blue Christmas Without You, using the pool stick as his microphone.

The whole family present.

We had a truly wonderful time!  It isn't often that you get to be together with family for several days in a row where no one has to go to work or anywhere else. We thank the Lord for this great blessing!

All the kids, plus Jie!