A feeling of thankfulness

A very busy Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone. Last night when I tuned into the eleven o'clock news, I watched the breaking news of the rescue mission of the Chilean miners. At first I watched half-heartedly, my mind on other things. Until that capsule emerged with the very first rescued miner. Wow. What a story. I can't imagine how the families must be feeling right now as they await the rescue of their loved ones. The images streaming across the screen from so far away are touching and powerful. I'm riveted. It brings a new meaning to the feeling of Thanksgiving, doesn't it? Today I'm feeling extra thankful!

And so I thought I'd do a re-cap of our Thanksgiving weekend.
What a beautiful weekend weather wise. Stunning! Our whole weekend was completely busy. Saturday morning we started off bright and early with Max's hockey. From there, it was a mad dash/rush to make it to the church in time for the wedding of Keith's cousin Tim. We dropped off Max at Aunt LeeAnne's on the way.

Tim & Beth's wedding was beautiful. We're kind of at that stage where we don't get invited to very many weddings so it's a treat when we can go and enjoy the celebration!

LeeAnne entertained Max extremely well while we were at the wedding. He had a blast....they played tennis....went biking....made crafts.....baked one huge monster cookie together....got icecream cones....and the list goes on and on. Thanks a bunch Legger! :-)

The rest of Saturday concluded with some picture taking for a friend and then a visit with Keith's parents who were in town for the wedding. All of a sudden on Saturday night I remembered I had agreed to bake apple pies for my mom's dinner on Sunday. Totally slipped my mind. So the baking began in earnest around 10:00pm.

Sunday morning we were up bright and early for church. I taught Sunday School and then slipped out to help my mom get Thanksgiving dinner ready. It was delicious!! The weather was so beautiful, we had one table set up in the house and one set up outside on the deck to eat at. In the afternoon we took family pics which always makes for interesting times.  I want to share this pic of Keith ripping around on my brother Jesse's little motor bike. Everyone was taking turns with it. Not me though. I'm one of those accident prone individuals... it's best I leave things like that alone.

Max enjoyed one glorious day of playing with cousins. Here they are, inspecting the culvert...

Monday morning we planned to go for a Thanksgiving Drive. First though, I quickly discovered that our hot water heater wasn't working when I went to shower. A trifle inconvenient. We called to have the repair man come and fix it on Tuesday and then off we went...

(Our backseat navigator kept an eye on the map.)

We headed up to Tobermory.

It's a cute little town which holds lots of memories for me from when I was a kid.

My grandparents had a cottage here. And since I was the oldest grandchild, I got to go along with them to the cottage quite a few times.

Not much has changed. The town surrounds the marina. The same shops are still there. And the same type of people....young families wandering around, older people who've lived there forever, and lots of granola-alternative lifestylers who are into diving and hiking and that type of thing. It reminded us just a stitch of our beloved Tofino. A scaled down version of it...but the same flavours and hints are there.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was whitefish. Which the boys devoured. I did not. They said it was gooooood and I'll take their word for it!

See that big stick of gummy sour jelly candies that Max is happily munching on below while we wander around the town?...

Well, he was quietly walking around and trying to eat them at the same time. They were verrrrrry chewy...

Next thing we knew... he had pulled out his front tooth with one of those gummy candies. Now he can officially sing that song in the next few months..."All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth..." I suspect he'll be singing it for a while. There is no hint of his grownup teeth moving in yet.

When Max saw this anchor he informed his dad that it was "A big fish hook. Probably for some kind of shark."  That kept Keith chuckling for a while.

After wandering around for a while, we went back to the truck and drove to the Bruce Peninsula National Park Visitors Centre. They have great exhibits to check out and a movie to watch.

Then we climbed up the lookout tower for this view...

And did a little hike on the Bruce Trail out to Little Dunks Bay...

It was a great family day. We haven't done an excursion like this for a while. And we all three enjoyed it!

After our hike, we headed for home. With a quick stop at LeeAnne's... she generously let me use her shower! :-)

And now we're back to a busy week. Keith went to Arnprior Tuesday and is hopefully coming home tonight. Max is at school and has piano lessons afterwards. The weather is chilly but sunny. So I think I'm going to head out for a walk before I pick him up at school. Sounds good to me!