Thanksgiving Recap (and plans for the rest of the weekend)

Wow, can you believe the Christmas Season is already here? Honestly, I am back in September somewhere - in fact I still have bulbs to plant!!!! I better get on that today! Regardless, this year Thanksgiving was a little different for us. Usually we go to either Tennessee or West Virginia for the holiday weekend. This year we didn't because we thought we should just stay put and save a few bucks. Gas is down but no matter how much we plan ahead we always spend money during the trip and gas isn't free so we just stayed home. Plus, Jude had school on Wednesday and I worked. Oh, and we thought it might snow and that means a little extra cash for us since Jake is going to be doing some snow plowing now. Either way we stayed home. Last week Jake and I were talking and we decided we would go to this homeless shelter and make Thanksgiving dinner with the two families that are staying there. It is a cool shelter (as far as shelters go) -it is a network of churches (Interfaith Network) that provide housing for homeless families. Each week the families go to a different church to sleep and then during the day they have a house that is called the family center where they shower and hang out. There are staff there and it is just a great place. I've had a couple of families stay there. So, I have a girl there now and she wasn't going anything on Thanksgiving we were planning to go and celebrate Thanksgiving there but in the end it didn't work out. It was okay. I did give her a ride on Thanksgiving though, because the buses don't run on holidays. As for our meal....I did most of the work on Wednesday night. I made dressing, green bean casserole, broccoli casserole, mashed sweet potatoes and turkey (with gravy). Everything went so smooth. I roasted the turkey in one of those roasting bags mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............ It was so good. I will always use those. I made pumpkin pies. In fact we ate pumpkin pie for breakfast. Why not? It probably was more healthy than pancakes! The kids LOVED it. I think we will do that every year...a new tradition. Even Avery chowed down. Later that afternoon we went to this Christmas Tree Festival in downtown Akron. People deocorate trees and donate them and they are sold as a fundraiser. The event is free (perfect for us LOL). It was nice. I think everyone had a good time. I did manage to go to CVS twice. I got some fantastic deals. Seriously- I spent $30 and ended up with $34 in extra bucks. Then I went back yesterday and bought a crock pot, tampons and makeup for 15 cents! I still have $30 in extra bucks. I love when I can do deals like that. I did get up in the middle of the night yesterday and went shopping. It is a lot more fun when you are with other people. I had a pretty good experience but I think I will make that a completely different post. Today we are going to the movies (finally). I have had a GC for some time and haven't used it - Jude has been bugging me to death! We are also going to get our tree and tommorow we will go to church and if the weather is decent I told Jude we could go ice skating - although we may hold off on that until next weekend. We have a lot going on so I will see you later!!!!