We Give Thanks

Thanksgiving was wonderful! Thank you for asking. It seemed small and quiet after so many years of Payne Clan/Jackson Clan gatherings so we did our best to live LARGE! We loved having Jay and Ilene and cousins Andrew and Beth here to celebrate and share with us (although sometimes the sharing part was a challenge). We are very grateful they were willing to make the long drive out from CA to celebrate and give thanks with us.
We did a lot of baking, playing, hiking, spinning, fish watching and of course eating. What we didn't do a lot of... photo taking.
Did we tell you how cold it was here? Freezing. Thanksgiving morning we woke up to snow. We spent 20 min. getting dressed in snow gear for 4 min. of being outside to play in it.

We tried to get a family picture for Grandma Payne's Christmas letter. Here are a few outtakes (we are saving the good ones for when the letter comes out).


P.S. Did we also tell you we had strep throat (Allie) and scarlet fever (the boys) just before company arrived? 24 hours of antibiotics, bleach water and disinfecting wipes (on everything) later... we were ready for our company.