Day #24---an extra special thankful day!

I am thankful for photos (and memories) of the good old days....

I hope your Thanksgiving was as pleasant as mine!

After spending the morning in the kitchen with Mother, we ate a regular feast! The turkey was tender; the potatoes and browned butter hit the spot; the cranberry sauce was tasty, as always; the dressing, delicious; the pies-----well, they weren't quite cool enough to eat yet, so we had some cake instead!

I did eat a piece of pie when I got home from work in town tonight though!

Oh, and these are our turkeys on Thanksgiving day: If they knew about what happens to most turkeys this time of year, they'd be most thankful that they're 4 years old already and too tough to be appetizing! :)

This is part of what I did in the kitchen this morning:

I took this cake along to work to share at the potluck meal.... One of my coworkers liked it so much that she took 3 pictures of it on her phone and then was showing the pictures to everybody. :)

It was a lovely day and I'm so very thankful for the MANY blessings the Lord has bestowed upon us all!!!!!!!!!

Pictures!!!

What fun... A couple days ago, Andrew got my mom's pictures (from her camera) loaded on the computer (we'd been having technical difficulties....) Mother has said before that she doesn't mind if I post the pictures she takes, so here is a long post of pictures from Mrs. B's camera. Some of them are pretty old news already, and they're in reverse order, but hopefully you'll enjoy them anyway.

These pictures are from last Friday, when we went up to Bismarck and moved Mother to her new, larger office across the hall from her old room.

Jacob peeking in the new room...
Mother unlocking her new office for the first time...

Andrew, starting to haul things from one room to the next...

Isn't that a spacious room? Mom's really excited about not being so cramped anymore...

Oh, and that's me--"Fixing" the hole in the ceiling. Kind of a silly picture, I know, but I wanted to post it so you can see I was helping too. :) (And I'm standing on a chair. I'm by no means that tall!)

Mother and Jacob, reassembling Mom's corner desk...

See? I told you she's happier to have more room!

Taking a break, after most of the work was done.

This is what the corner of the room (the waiting room part) looks like now, minus the water glasses and plus some larger chairs...

The current room divider... (The guys are working on building a portable sound-proof room divider now.)

The next 3 pictures are from Thanksgiving, when my mom's brother and his wife were at our house...

We had several of uncle Russell's childhood/young manhood souvenirs from when we went through Grandpa's house to get ready for his auction sale this last summer, so Russell had fun looking through those things------and trying some on:

Here's aunt LV, frying up some of her Filipino egg roll specialties...

The five following pictures were taken in the basement of the Kintyre church, where we attended the funeral of an elderly neighbor friend of ours, Leo S. I think my favorite memory of Leo was the time when I was home alone and my dad asked me to go check on the cows' water up in the pasture, as it was nearly winter time and sometimes the water hose by the old farmstead froze up. I went up there and, sure enough, the water pipe was froze. Leo happened to be driving around on his 4-wheeler and stopped in the farmyard there to say Hi. When he saw my troubles, he dug his pliers out of his pocket and helped me squeeze and bang the pipe and hose until the water finally came. :) It is so nice to have neighbors!

Anyway, here are my brothers with 3 of our neighbor children who were at the funeral with their parents...

Here I am with Mariah and Josiah. I've known these two little ones all their lives, and it's really been fun to see them grow up and change and learn and....

Friends and neighbors, Tamera and Mother... (and a speck of dust on the camera lens, obviously.)

Andrew, waiting to say "Goodbye" to Gladys, Leo's wife of many years, and our dear friend! (Gladys would come over to our house for tea or just to visit many times every year, and she'd even pay me to cut her hair for her. :) Now she's living in Fargo, so, sadly, we don't see her very much anymore.

My parents...

Oh, and the next few pictures are from cattle working time last month!

Dad, bringing a calf up the ally way...

Mother, giving a shot...

The "Done" calves...

Jacob tagging a calf...

Myself, taking care of the records...

Dad's cousin, Jerome, covering this fella's eyes while Andrew double tags him with yellow ear-tags to signify that he's a bull. (Andrew bought this young bull from me. :) )

And two more pictures, taken sometime in the last month or so. None of us are very good on our instruments, but we enjoy plunking, strumming, learning and having fun together!

That's all folks. Have a good night!

Happy Thanks-giving~

We had a lovely day at home, spent with our family and some extended family from Montana. My uncle Russell and aunt LV came and joined us for our Thanksgiving feast. :)

The pies were all baked,

the platter arranged lovingly,

the stickies were stuck,

and the pilgrims hung carefully...

There were turkeys on windows,

and turkeys on plates...

Hey! If needed, those drumsticks could work well as weights!

At last, the table was filled,

and as we were all "Starving"...

Mom handed Uncle a knife and asked him to proceed with the carving...

And, it was very good! :)

We do truly have so much to be grateful for.........~

"For the beauty of the earth,

for the beauty of the skies,

For the love that from our birth

over and around us lies;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

this our hymn of grateful praise!"

The cows are home!

This morning after chores, I learned that we were bringing the cows home today... So, after the coveralls were donned; the milk cow and the steers were locked in a separate pen; and the fence was opened, Dad and Andrew hopped on their dirt bikes, Mom got in the van, Jacob jumped in the Ram, and I got to drive the 4-wheeler. It took about 2 hours from the time we left our farm until we got the cows home from the pasture (about 3 miles up the road), so everything went pretty well. I think my mom got some pictures, so perhaps there will be some to share at a later date.


Once the cows were locked in the proper place and fed some hay bales, we all ate a quick lunch of pancakes with whipped cream and peach sauce, and then I headed for town. I just got home after a VERY busy night--it was extra busy because we were short-staffed and we had to work around the hallways-full of Trick or Treaters. But, we managed. It was fun to see 2 of our neighbor families, so that was the bonus of working today. :) I so very much dislike what Halloween stands for though that it was not very pleasant being around "Witches" and "Goblins" and etc, etc.... I'm glad that's behind us for another year!

Our Thanksgiving celebration~

When we arrived in Eureka, SD at noon, Grandma Marly had prepared a bountiful, traditional feast--and so feast we did! Everything was so delicious and by the end of the meal, the turkey was no longer stuffed, but we definitely were!



We were together for Thanksgiving, true, but we had another reason to celebrate: my grandma turned 75 last Sunday! We got to give Grandma her presents today.

My parents--watching...

Grandpa & Grandma B...

After dishes were done and the food was put away, and after we'd shown our grandparents the 400+ pictures of James & Amanda's wedding, Mother needed a nap, but the rest of us worked on this puzzle... It was only 300 pieces, but with all the similar shades of green, it took us almost 2 hours to complete!

It didn't take nearly that long to take it apart and put it back in the box!

We still had a little time, so we taught Grandma how to play "Monopoly--the card game" and we played 3 games of that before eating a light supper and heading for home.

It was a lovely day!

We got home late and then still had to do the milking, but spending time together with family is very important to us!

I hope everyone else had a lovely day--enjoying some of the many blessings that God has given to us all............................

Happy Thanksgiving Day~

Here's wishing you and yours a lovely time together as you celebrate the many blessings God has bestowed upon you!

I feel so blessed this year to have met so many fellow-blogging friends! I've learned so much from what they/you have to share and hope that I can be a blessing to others as they/you've been to me...
Just today, I was blessed when I read Miss Jen's post about thanks-giving. If you'd like, you can read it here.~

Also on Jen's site were pictures of the pie crusts she made and I decided to try the design out on one of my pies this afternoon. I like how it turned out, so will probably use this technique again in the future!

Here's a before-being-baked picture of one of my pumpkin pies:

...and an after:

I was searching (for a few minutes) for a nice video about Thanksgiving to post here, but as most of them were just of a bunch of turkeys hopping around singing songs about eating beef and the like, I thought I'd post this nice piano song, called "Thanksgiving." The pictures are so grand and I don't think you can help but thank God for His beautiful creation when you watch it!

Well, I'd best hop into my comfortable bed (for which I'm very grateful!) as tomorrow morning after chores, we're heading to Eureka, SD to visit my dad's parents and to share in a Thanksgiving feast with them...