Thanksgiving

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We did, although as usual it was too short. This year we headed up to Iowa City for Part 1 of 3 Thanksgivings. The Papke family will not be getting together for Christmas this year as it's an "Outlaw Christmas" as we like to call it so we all gathered for Thanksgiving.

We had this little surprise on Thanksgiving morning - yes the head is attached to the neck!


As my Dad would say "Save the neck for me Clark!"


Then little did we know it was also Christmas this year at Thanksgiving as our parents surprised us with our gifts. We'll be a little more prepared next time!

Andrew and Rebekah opening their gifts.



One of our family traditions is to make a hot chocolate mix from scratch. It was my Aunt Arlene's recipe and is delicious! So I got out the 20 qt pot so Abby could "make" it herself with out a big mess. She was quite proud of herself.

The almost finished product.

Here with the dinner table all ready for the food.

And the first official Papke kid's table for the girls. Grandma Papke volunteered to sit with them and one of Abby's first comments was "Grandma, you need some wine!" and that pretty much sums it up.

The next Thanksgiving was the Cousin's Thanksgiving in Cedar Rapids, IA which had a good number of the Power's cousins, aunts, and uncles. Another good meal and good time with family. Look out for Okoboji this summer!

The final Thanksgiving was in Onawa, IA but we didn't make it as far as we hoped as Abby got sick in the truck which required us to return back to Iowa City for a bath and cleaning of the truck. We ended up heading back to Columbia later that day so we could recover Abby at home and in case if anyone else got her bug. Thankfully we didn't.

Now it's on to Christmas shopping and traveling every weekend until after New Years! Just a normal Schmidt month for us :)