thanksgiving and family friday

 Reviewing our Thanksgiving begins with this beautiful picture of our carrots: our final garden harvest of the season. After peeling and trimming, there was a full pound of carrots which we roasted and added a maple glaze...mmm, yum. We hosted this year's Thanksgiving dinner, with 11 attending.  I didn't get a good picture of "the bird" but you can imagine it: golden brown deliciousness. My secret: Reynold's oven bags, and cooking the "stuffing" outside the bird. Below is our tablesetting, with a runner and tablecloth I sewed up this week. The girlie made a full complement of handprint turkey place-cards. And we rejoiced and gave thanks, and ate too much.

 Friday, instead of joining the throngs doing "Black Friday" shopping-frenzy activities, we spent a family day together! We went to the B&O Train Museum to see Santa arriving on a steam engine (pictures turned out terrible, but it was fun). They also had a big Lego train display for the fans in my family:

 The decorations at the museum were wonderful, with a pair of these giant nutcrackers, and all the lit-up snowflakes hung from the rafters:

 And it was a sunny and fairly warm afternoon for a little play outside the museum:

 This is a nice view of the trains and roundhouse as we arrived back in the station after our train ride while we were there, and a view of the inside of a caboose they have on the train-yard:

Then! In case we had not had enough trains, we drove out to the Ellicott City Station (after a stop at Chick-fil-A, which was also very important), where our train museum membership also allowed us to visit, because they had ANOTHER large Lego train set-up as well as several other model train displays. I loved the wreath on the red caboose, so festive:

 And we got to see Santa! He had been hard at work on the railroad, and was dressed appropriately. It was good to have the kids get to tell him what they wanted and to at least have this one visit to count on, in case we don't get to see him somewhere else this month:

A fun family day. A good Thanksgiving holiday. We truly have so much to be thankful for, and we look forward to the coming season of joy as we prepare to celebrate Jesus's birth.