Randomness and Thankfulness

We've been busy the past couple of weeks.
Here's some of what's been going down in the Hanks household.
We decorated for Christmas early this year because we were not going
to be at home on Thanksgiving which is our normal deco day.

We retired our 12 year old tree and joined the world of pre-litness (?).
It was joyous and made decorating for Christmas so much more fun.
Costco had beautiful trees with 1500 lights on them for less than all the other places around with only 800 lights. It's the Clark W. Griswold of trees.

In other news, Ava turned 6 months old.
She's still the peanut of our family only weighing in at 15 lb 6 oz and 25 inches long.
We love our little pip squeek! She's eating all kinds of yummy baby food...seriously, she ate one that was Chicken mango risotto yesterday. I'm already raising a foodie!
She is also rolling everywhere, laughing, and said something that resembled "daddy."
She's almost sitting but not quite all by herself.
She still sleeps about 13-14 hours at night and naps twice during the day for about 2 hours each time. She's a dream of a baby and has been the biggest blessing and joy to our family.

Here's Ava with her buddy, Emmy on Thanksgiving day.
We were able to serve some people in our community at our church (and beyond)
thanks to the gracious hearts of our friends and church family.
I have never seen so much food as was at our church that day.
God worked very differently than we expected which is good since my ways are not like His nor my thoughts anywhere close to being His thoughts.

Brent J. and some of his buddies came out early that morning to fry 7 or 8 turkeys.
So thankful for their sacrifice
and their turkey carving instructions that were in color and in pictures.

I sharpened my turkey carving skills...a-hem.
I loved serving the community with these two friends who are passionate about
giving and serving. Thanks Sumer and Erin for including us!
Erin wrote about the day much more eloquently than me here.
A great picture of one of our tables that I swiped from Erin's
blog. Thanks to Tracey for making all of verses of thanks
to put on the tables.

Mia made everyone paper hats.
The girl is a crafter like no one else.

We tried sponge rollers for the first time. Mia and Ella Kate quickly
decided that the ol' "beauty hurts" saying is hogwash.
We took the rollers out as quickly as we put them in.
Oh well...it was a sweet memory to relive even if only for 5 minutes.

We made pretzels from a fundraiser kit I bought.
I'm a sucker for a cooking project.
They surprisingly tasted great.

You're up-to-date now!