Thanksgiving review

December is here! What has happened since I last wrote? Every day I think I will sit down and put something up on the blog, and then the day disappears.  Part of this is because Baby no longer takes a good long nap. She only napped 2 days this week.  I really, really, really don't want naptime to go away.

We also had the excitement of having the cousins here for the long Thanksgiving weekend. The kids had the whole week off, but I can't really remember that we did much of anything, other than hang out. We had one fun day with friends, and another day of shopping, but we spent a good deal of time at home reading or cleaning or watching movies. On Wednesday, my brother-in-law and his girls came down (my sister-in-law is in Bali), and we went swimming in our pool and to the beach. We also went to the store about 8 times between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon.  We ate a lot of food on Thursday.  Our retired priest friend came over to bless the house and had the kids sing a Perry Como song - "Bless this House, O Lord."  It was very sweet, but I wanted to pinch all the kids for giggling when Fr. read from Colossians about forgiving your brother and obeying your parents.

After dinner we joined some friends for a pie party, and another friend came by in the evening because she and her kids couldn't come for dinner because they had a prior invite. We sat around sipping Sambuca, my favorite after dinner drink.  So it was a social day, but not a huge crowd day.  I had to suppress a comment when a friend from my exercise group was talking about the logistics of feeding nine. That's normal for us. Ten felt like a small group.

On Friday we went to a famous surf beach, San Onofre, also known as Trestles. We camped at the Marine Corps Base campground that is right on the beach.  I am not a huge fan of seaside camping, but I did finally have the opportunity to just sit and read and watch the sunset since the toddler played happily with her cousins.  We spent a good part of the day there and returned home in time to start laundry and eat leftovers, another wonderful part of the Thanksgiving weekend. Love my husband's turkey pot pie!

The second turkey the brothers fixed - they made a practice turkey Wednesday night. It disappeared in minutes. 

Cheers! Time to eat!

An activity for children waiting to eat. Not Instagrammable.

Beach portraits

This is looking toward the San Onofre Surf Club - you can't really tell from this picture how many people are in the water. A lot. Down by the palm tree are a few little picnic shelters and shower heads nestled in bamboo "rooms"

A flat day

My niece salutes the sky.

Not the prettiest campground, but people love it. This is California camping: RV's on the beach.

They are coming!

Beach ball in the sunset

Good night, sunshine.

Surfing day 2: Grey skies full of rain, but bigger waves

Oops! Some dishes were left in the dishwasher and grew a beard!

For your listening pleasure - to practice for the Epiphany house blessing: