Thanksgiving on...

Here's the adorable tiny-hand turkey that Frederick 'made' for us for Thanksgiving. 

 And here's the real live turkey that was in the Starbucks parking lot on the last day of work before we left town for Thanksgiving...

 And here's Clara, Anders and Henry dressed up for Thanksgiving morning.

 We were up in Minnesota for Thanksgiving this year. We stayed with Will and Sandy, but had dinner at Aunt Paula's newish house (they've been in about a year now) and Grandpa and Nana came up to eat turkey as well.

Here's Aunt Paula loving on Anders...

 The kids had a great time with their cousin Anders, too. Here they are, performing the classic black-olive-on-the-finger trick.

They didn't totally fill up on olives. Here they are getting ready for the big meal. 

Aunt Paula took extra care to make sure we could all sit down together at one big table. It was so nice to be together!

Clara had made some table decorations.

After dinner, of course, there was artwork to make. 

Clara got to wear one of Grandpa Fritz's old shirts to protect her clothes. 

Frederick got in on the action too. 

One of the activities the next day was to make sugar cookies with Aunt Sandy. She was happy to allow the kids to choose a wide and crazy variety of colors. The cookies turned out adorable and delicious. We made foxes, reindeer, hedgehogs, footballs, stars, bears and squirrels. 

Frederick tried to watch the football game with Uncle Will, but he was a little yelly at times.

Before going home we had a yummy cheeseburger meal at a place called Burger Jones.

 Clara ordered the Little Elvis, which was peanut butter, banana and Nutella. Ate the whole thing up!

When we got back from Minnesota it was right back to school and work for all of us. We decided we didn't have the luxury of time to go cut our own tree down this year, so we went to a local garden center here, on a misty evening, and picked out a nice one.

 Frederick approved of our choice. I don't actually think this was it...

 Completely unrelated...Clara has been doing a ton of writing lately. Here's a note she left for the cleaners. "I'm a girl, Clara. May you please clean the ceiling right next to the trash can." I loved it so much.

 Here's another one she left for St. Nick. " I love you St. Nicholas. You are so nice to me. Thank you for that. Could you give me a note back. Clara. And Frederick." I especially love "dif" for "give." It's so Clara.

 Here are the kids on St. Nick's morning, checking out their new ornaments. We also had a special Swedish coffee cake made from Grandma Opal's recipe.

Here's an outtake from our Christmas card photo shoot. 

 Did I mention that Mom and Zeke were here with us for a bit?

 Frederick especially loves all of the ornaments that look like his favorite thing in the world...."ball!"