Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

For our Thanksgiving this year we decided to really make it a feast and eat in courses.

Also, my brother in law's family has an annual tradition of an Italian feast on New Years day.  We had talked about joining them this year, but they are going to be gone, so we incorporated some of the Italian feast into Thanksgiving.

Around 10:30 am we started off with appetizers: deviled eggs, crackers and cheese, veggie platter, apples and marshmallow/yogurt dipping sauce and spanakopita.

Later we officially started the feast with a cranberry juice toast and 

Cappiletti soup with rolls.  

The Cappiletti is homemade stuffed pasta, shaped like a little cap, hence the name.

A couple of hours later, we had the Lasagna course.  

Also, homemade by my brother in law.  

We next came the pumpkin pie palette cleanser.

After our tummies had settled a bit, we moved on to the veggie course with baked sweet potatoes.  It turns out if you wrap them in foil then bake them, they are delicious!  We also had succotash and green bean almondine.   

It was all delicious.  

Next came the main course of turkey, 

stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and cranberry jelly.

Last of all was the Pie course.  We had 14 1/2 pies. 2 lemon meringue, 1 pumpkin chiffon, 1 cherry, 1 large apple, 2 chocolate chess, 2 pumpkin spice, 1 large pumpkin, 1 chocolate cream, 1 vanilla pudding, 1 old fashioned cream, 1 strawberry, and 1/2 a pecan pie.  

It was great having the courses.  None of the food got lost in the crowd, you could really savor all of it.  We did end up eating all day long, but we took breaks and played games,

 and there were enough adults that we took turns in the kitchen.  

It was a wonderful day of food, family and fun.

And a good time to reflect on all that we are blessed with.  

Happy Giving Thanks, we are.

For My Happiness

I never wanted to move back to Seattle.  I was content to live across the sound, in our spacious house, with our big yard, next door to my sister, with my hair salon inside. 

 I loved our life.  

But it wasn't the plan to stay there.  It was my plan, but not God's plan.  I have come to love God's plans for me.  One of my favorite scriptures is Proverbs 3:5-6.

His plan was for us to move back to Seattle.  After Trip graduated from graduate school and got a job, his commute ended up being 2 hours each way, taking the ferry and the bus.  This was too much for us.  We had just sacrificed not seeing him for years so he could earn his MBA, we wanted to be near him and his work.  But I was reluctant to give up my house and my sister.

I have found that the Lord is very gentle with me.  He leads me along, letting me believe what I need to, to get where I need to be.  First we had to move to Seattle, but he didn't make me give up my house yet.  We rented it out, this was a blessing and a growing experience (read trial).

We miraculously (the events surrounding this really were a miracle.  I'm not just saying that) found a house in Seattle to rent that would fit all 6 soon to be 7 of us, that we could afford.  We really had to down size.  

After a few months, I started to feel like we should buy a house in Seattle.  How would we do that?  We explored some options and it was apparent that if we were going to buy, we needed to sell our other house.  By this point, I was not enjoying being a landlord, so that wasn't a bad thing.  We were able to sell our house to a wonderful couple who loved it as much as we did, and they were in a better position to take care of all the land and have done great things with it.

We started to look for a house in Seattle.  We really felt like we needed to stay in the area of the city we had been living, but there wasn't much there that we could afford that would house us all.  We now had 5 kids and were just expecting number 6.  We found one that seemed like a good fit.  It was across the street from some friends of ours, it had a full basement that we could utilize as living area.  It was still more money that I thought we could afford and it needed a lot of work.  We prayed about it and felt good about buying it.  We put an offer on it, but it all broke down after the inspection showed even more work that needed doing, and a seller that wasn't wanting to do any repairs.

I was content to wait.  We really were in a good situation, having sold our house, we could sit back and relax, and wait for the right house to come along.  I didn't feel settled or quite like myself though.

A few months later, I was fed up with house hunting.  I didn't want to buy a house anymore.  We had seen everything on the market in our area that we could possibly afford, but none of them were anything I wanted.  One day, I was praying about my frustrations with house hunting and a picture of the house we had originally put an offer on came into my head.  I looked it up and it was back on the market after another pending offer fell through.  I discussed it with Travis and we prayed about it and made an offer on it again for the price we had agreed to before.  The sellers came back saying they wanted more money since they had done some of the work that we wanted done before.  

I was really had to think about it and pray about it.  It was more money than I wanted to spend.  We were in a alright situation where we were.  But, when I prayed about it, the answer came to me that it "was for my happiness." 

It really has been.  I finally felt settled.  We had room for all of our children and another one a few years later.  We have wonderful neighbors, who may not be family, but they are close.  We have since put a salon in this house, too.  My sister we had lived next to, moved to out of state.  Our yard is a more manageable size.  We were able to get chickens.  I have unlimited projects to work on and a garage/shop to do it in.  The Lord has blessed us finically to be able to meet our obligations.  Trip is close to work and so we get to see him much more often.  We have made great friends and love it here.  It truly was for my happiness.