Playing Catchup: Thanksgiving 2012

With our big gaps between posts, we have a fair amount to catch up on. As I can, I'm going to start filling in the gaps. Here goes:

Thanksgiving:

We tested the capacity of our house over Thanksgiving and I think we did pretty well. My parents and David came down from Brooklyn, Andrew and Mindy and their family came from Butler County, PA, and Tom's parents came up for dinner. We also got to meet Elizabeth, Andrew and Mindy's youngest for the first time! I think we fit pretty comfortably and didn't even have anybody sleeping in the shop.

We had a very nice dinner and had a great time hanging out with family. As with any holiday involving Butlers, we did work on some projects but we made sure to choose ones that did not involve paint, plaster dust and they were all things that could be dropped mid-way in case we decided that we'd had enough.

While Dad and Andrew and Mindy's family were down in Philly, David helped Tom and I load a borrowed truck with brush and haul a couple of loads over to Tom's work. We don't have pictures of it, but apparently David did get his turn on the telehandler - good times. 

Mom cracked the whip on getting some our poor tortured plants into the ground. Most of them had been sitting next to the house without any care for months. The Carex wasn't even in soil - just bareroot  in pots. We got a nice little section of the yard under the huge norway maple planted with Carex morowii 'Ice Dance' (divisions from Temple) and a mix of Hellebores (leftovers from MBF). Later that afternoon once everybody else returned Mom also wrangled the little kids and had them raking leaves and gathering piles of sticks. One of the mornings when the kids were a bit stir crazy I managed to get the 2 older ones to help me wash windows. I think we may have gotten 5 done (just a small fraction of our many windows), but those ones are vastly improved.

Some of us also made the trip down to Longwood to see the Christmas lights. Thank you to Tom's mom for the comp tickets! 

Cole trying to catch water droplets in the random spitting fountain in the children's garden. 

Beech Allee with leaves still on the tree - really gorgeous.

Cole had a really good time and, on the walk back to the parking lot told us that it was late and time for bed. We wholeheartedly agreed.

Right before everybody went their separate ways on Saturday, we took one last load of brush over to Meadowbrook. Tom unloaded it (with quite the audience)...

Then the kids got rides in the telehandler...

and David drove the truck...

Andrew and Mindy and the kids went on their way and Mom, Dad and David returned to our house for  a while longer.  David, as usual, fell asleep on the couch and made friends with the cats.

not pictured: Bert - curled up near David's stomach.

It was a fun weekend. We're so glad that everybody came.