This is a big week in the U.S.A. with our annual Thanksgiving Day on Thursday. My mosaics this week are all about Thanksgiving.
A few weeks ago I went to a sign making class and it was fun to make the sign above and then find a spot in our home for it.
This mirror has moved around our home but it’s always the spot for our THANKFUL blocks.
Gobble gets it’s spot on the hutch closest to the table where we will gobble our Thanksgiving Meal.
Some different settings over the years.
The food that our plates are never big enough for. Always turkey, always stuffing, always candied sweet potatoes/yams, and always gravy. We can take or leave mashed potatoes or something green. Desserts include pumpkin pie and or pecan pie.
The most important thing is to have people we love sitting around the table. Most years besides our immediate family we have my sister and her hubby with us. She’s the only one of my 7 brothers and sisters that live in the state of Washington. We’ve also had my brother Tim and his wife Letty fly up to spend Thanksgiving with us.
Most years we have two gatherings one at home on any day before or after the big day and one at our friends home with all of their family and friends on the actual day. We work around our kids for this big day. Every other year Josh and Laura trade off being with us and being with Laura’s family. Next year Dan and Jamie will stay home with their new little one. It’s hard to trek 5-1/2 hours over the mountain pass to get here. Andrew missed a few Thanksgivings because he was in Afghanistan or at his base in North Carolina. Katie spent a few Thanksgivings without him by her side.
When your kids get married and have more than one family to enjoy you have to let them have the freedom without nagging and guilt to enjoy holidays elsewhere. We are happy to celebrate anytime we can with our kids. It doesn’t have to be on the given day.
Growing up in my family celebrating Thanksgiving was not a given. My parents immigrated to the U.S. after WWII and it took a while for this holiday to set in. Then the church we were part of had annual conventions over Thanksgiving weekends so the meal was big and in a church hall. Dear and I spent most Thanksgivings after we were married at his mom and dad’s. After we moved our family from California to Washington state we started hosting Thanksgiving. This next photo was our one and only Thanksgiving in Washington State with Dear’s family with us. Dear’s father died in 1985 a couple months before our Katie was born. We moved Dear’s mother up to Washington with us in 1988 and built a mother-in-law apartment for her in our daylight basement.
I’m guessing this was 1989 or so. Dear’s brother and SIL at the head of the table, to the right their two oldest girls (they have one more daughter born in 1991), our three, BIL Steve with glasses that rival mine, sister Lana, me, brother Leonard (Lana’s twin) and Dear’s mother Verna. We left this house behind in 1997.
If you live in the U.S.A. where are you celebrating Thanksgiving this year? Do you cook or are you invited elsewhere?
I’m going to link up with Maggie from Normandy Life for Mosaic Monday and later this week to ABC Wednesday for T is for Thanksgiving with additional thanks to Mrs. Nesbitt and Roger’s team of ABC’ers.
ABC Wednesday is close to starting their Farewell Tour in Blogdom and we were challenged to come up with our first ABC Wednesday Post.
You can see my first post in February of 2008 by clicking on, D is for…
The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b. 
I like very much that your family will gather to have a Thanksgiving whether it is on Thursday or not. I feel the same way about Thanksgiving and I feel the same way about Christmas. We’re adults now and we can figure it out. No matter that we have two or three Thanksgiving meals. Ha! Things will be different this year. This is true for many, many families. I will be baking some pies and taking them to my son’s home where we will gather to honor the day. It’s all good. God is good.
Happy Thanksgiving, Ellen! I enjoyed seeing your family photos. Candied yams are a must on our table too–they are my daughter’s favorite. I’ve cooked the Thanksgiving meal almost every year, with the exception of the year my daughter was born 2 days before the holiday, and a few years our children were in the west and we were in the east, so we celebrated with my oldest brother and his large family.
Happy Thanksgiving, Ellen! I liked seeing your pictures. I have the family coming this year, as many as can come, but things are topsy turvy as my dad just had a heart attack and we had to move him today from the hospital to a new living situation. It wasn’t part of my scheduling! But God knows.
Holly, sorry to hear about your dad. Our pop is in the hospital today because of heart issues. Praying the move goes well for you dad and that your Thanksgiving celebration is good…
Hope you have a very happy thanksgiving. You are so right, you enjoy celebrating with whoever can make it. Lovely family photos. Thanks for sharing them. B x
How wonderful to see scenes from some of your family Thanksgivings, it is a lovely tradition that I sometimes wish we celebrated over here as well. It would entail quite a bit of travelling but worth it I’m sure.
Wishing you all another lovely Thanksgiving together again this year.
Happy Mosaic Monday.
Happy Thanksgiving! Great wisdom about ” sharing” your adult children… we believed that too, but I have friends who had so much trouble with that concept.
Beautiful photos and wonderful memories. Now that my husband has passed we don’t celebrate a whole lot—I mean my daughters and I. But we are thankful for so many things—we do remember
MB
I love seeing your family photos too! We both have so much to be thankful for. I’m blessed to have spent time with lots of my family on our trip so cooking a nice meal for just myself and hubby will be a celebration too. I always try not to feel sad at holidays when I can’t be with family. When my kids were growing up we always had big Thanksgiving dinners with family and friends. Enjoy your week! I’m sure lots of us will be using recipes from the cookbook! Sweet hugs, Diane
Happy Thanksgiving, Ellen! Your table and food and loved ones are beautiful! God bless you all.
What lovely and happy Thanksgiving you all have. You are truly blessed.
A quiet Thanksgiving here at my house with just my husband and I.
What delightful mosaics! And I always like seeing all the different hair styles. 🙂 Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
What a beautiful mosaic of happy memories. I love those gobble blocks. Did you make those yourself?
No Winneyb, I bought them at a craft fair at Country Village in Bothell.
Thanks for sharing your family photos. I always make candied yams for Thanksgiving. Have a blessed Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is a wonderful celebration. Great to see various photos throughout the years.
Love the sign you made! Went shopping for our Thanksgiving meal today. As all of our kids live out of state and since we are both on weight loss programs we decided to go without dessert (although I sorely tempted to do something with the pecan pumpkin butter I bought at an Amish store in Utah) and potatoes. I get hungry just thinking about all the turkey though:)
A very blessed Thanksgiving to you and yours!
Blessings, Aimee
Your mosaics are so joyful. Family is the greatest thing to be thankful of! We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Finland but enjoy with all your dearest!
Happy Thanksgiving, Ellen! I really enjoyed seeing all your family pictures and the food… 🙂
Your Thanksgiving signs are wonderful and I giggled when you wrote that the “gobble gobble” is near where you eat the food… cute!
What fun to read about your Thanksgiving celebrations through the years…and to see the family photos! You have words of wisdom there about celebrating and adult children. It is so important to make celebrations pleasant and God-honoring…it is not a time to place guilt or to be inflexible.
Enjoy your festivities…all week long! Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
LOVE the Rockwell motif!
ROG, ABCW
Love all your décor and must say you’re a very lucky woman to have such a large and loving family. Happy Thanksgiving, neighbour!
Leslie
abcw team
Your family Thanksgiving pictures are wonderful, – glad you took up the custom of celebrating this special day.
It has been a treat to see your home decorated for this holiday and to see the table laden with so much good food!
wishing you and your family a very blessed Thanksgiving!
wonderful pictures of family- I like your decorations for Thanksgiving!
Beautiful mosaics and sweet memories! Love, love all your table scapes and your cheerful decorations. Have a most wonderful Thanksgiving with all your dear ones.
I really love your decorations. Your feast looks delicious! I’m getting excited for Thanksgiving. Going to try a few things in advance tomorrow to make it easier on Thursday.
Lovely decorations and beautiful photo’s Ellen.. but I truly love your mirror, Its gorgeous!
Have a nice ABC-day / – Week
♫ M e l ☺ d y ♫ (abc-team)
http://melodymusic.nl/a-b-c-wednesday-19-t/
these are such very precious photos, and memories, to treasure. A Very Happy Thanksgiving to you all x
Hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day. Absolutely my more favorite holiday and somewhat strange to celebrate here in England. But we do. Enjoy!