This past Thanksgiving brought with it the usual craziness that our small family can muster, but as usual, it was a lot of fun. Josh and Bre and Kaia came into town too, and it was so nice getting to visit them! What a surprise to see Kaia all grown up! Here's what she looked like the last time she was here:

And here's how she looked at Thanksgiving:

And what a sweet big girl she's become!

We all headed over to my parents' house that afternoon, and Mom gave each of the girls some beautiful scarves she had crocheted for them. This is Bre, trying to get it folded correctly over her head…

After dinner, we played a game called Likewise. If you've never played this, it's a fun, fast-paced "party game" in which each player has a greaseboard-paddle and pen, and when a phrase is given, each person writes down (or draws) something that they feel fits the phrase. After a set time, all the players simultaneously reveal what they've written on their boards, and the players with like answers gain points, while those who had odd answers get nothing, and so the game goes on.

It was Bre's turn to roll the dice, to find out of we were to draw or write our answer…

Josh was a very focused player…

(By the way, my mother keeps a very clean house, but once the Stewarts descend on the Kwaak home, there isn't usually a clean countertop or a closed cabinet door to be found. 😉 We do love to have a lot of commotion at our get-togethers!)

Here was one of the phrases played:

And here were some of the answers:

Mike always enjoys a bit of game drama…

And here was another phrase:

Again, Bre was not amused with Josh's gameplay, although Josh appeared to be enjoying himself…

(I think his idea of a fun game is seeing how easily he can get Bre rankled! Ha!)

I think my favorite part of our family holidays, however, is when we sit and relax and talk at the table. One never knows what the topic will be.. the latest headlines, chatter about past holidays, ideas, or even how one would interpret a certain Bible verse. It's always lively conversation, and mostly everyone seems to hang on to what my dad will say; he's a man of few words, but when he does speak, everyone listens.

I wish my brother and sister and her family could have been here this time! Sabrina and Sophie were there also, but somehow they managed to duck the camera, along with my Mom. I hope your holidays with your family are as enjoyable as ours always are. I look forward to the time together this year as well… I'm so thankful for these moments together!

Finally! I just got around to uploading the photos I took all the way back in late November from the annual sampler exchange Mom and I do. Things were a little more hurried this year than in years past.. we pretty much blew past and tossed each other our samplers in jubilant exchange before I was back in the car, hurrying back to Plum Street in Cruella DeVille-esque mode. It was a very busy season for both of us.

Last year we didn't open our boxes from Jill until we were together, but when I called Mom to see if she had time for me to run over, she said, "Yes! Hurry! I can't wait for you to see your piece!!! Jill did an outstanding job!!"

"Wait. You opened the box?" I asked.

"Yes!" She gleefully replied. "I couldn't stand to wait another minute!"

So after I hung up, I went ahead and opened the box from Jill, wrapped it in some sort of pretend wrapping paper, and headed over to Chez Mom.

We both agreed to scale back this year on what we were stitching for each other because of time constraints. (That was her idea, so I went ahead and tossed the almost-finished Ann Medd Sampler I had been stitching for her for several months and opted for something much smaller.)

(I'm only kidding.)

Getting our picture proved to be very tough because we both kept laughing at how awful they were turning out. As soon as I'd get one that I'd think was passable, she'd see it and exclaim, "My hair! Oh no, my hair! What happened??"

And that's when I'd look at the photo again, and notice suddenly that I'd forgotten to do anything with my hair.

For now, I'll bypass showing our photo, and just get straight to the point: what we stitched for each other.

I was so thrilled with what my mom chose to do for me, especially because it's one I had never seen before! I love love love it! Thank you again, Mom. 🙂 It's perfect!

My mom found out from The Primitive Hare that this isn't an exact reproduction, but rather several parts of different antiques, all brought together to form this beautiful sampler. It's wonderful, and I love the soft browns and blues, which Jill brought out beautifully in the moulding!

Here is what I did for Mom:

This is a chart that is no longer in print, but if you do happen to have the chart, you'll notice I left off the "Elizabeth Whipp" portion from the top, and stitched my initials instead. I chose it for Mom because I just felt like it was so her, especially with the deer motif in the center. And again, Jill's taste in frames is outstanding. I couldn't be happier with it!

As for our photo together, we settled on one that we thought was decent enough…

…It was Mom who realized the glaring problem. (I was still marveling at our hair.)

So we hurriedly turned our samplers around before the timer on the camera clicked off, and called it good.

 I hope if ayone else out there exchanged stitched pieces with someone, you had just as much fun as we did, even if we did manage to get the whole event done in 7 1/2 minutes! We've decided that for next year, we'll have a theme: Christmas! And I think I've already got Mom's chosen… 🙂