It All Began Wednesday

What a crazy few days we've had!!  Early in the Thanksgiving week I notified my kid's teachers that they would be out for Accion de Gracias (Thanksgiving).  Wednesday they had a field trip to a local theater.  I was excited for them to get to go.  What a fun way for them to finish up the week before their holiday.
Because of needing to do a bunch of cooking and cleaning I had arranged for the kids to eat lunch at school.  I had cleaned about half the house when I got a call, early afternoon, that Karis had a temperature and chills and they asked if I could come get her.

She had hardly eaten any lunch and one of the lunch break monitors was laying down in a room with her.  She did not look like she felt well at all, poor girl!  I got her all comfy on the couch watching a movie while I got back to cleaning before Brennan & Reegan got home.
That evening we were welcoming our dear colleague/friends from Prague, the James'.  They were here for the guys to do some work and to celebrate the holiday with us.

We had planned on joining thirty-something of our Madrid colleagues for Thanksgiving and figured we were going to have to change our plans, which we did.  Karis continued to have a fever and did for 3 days.   Thank the Lord and Lysol that no one else got it.  Seeing as Jerry practically used it as a cologne!  Ha!!  And now he's sick with his own thing, go figure!

We threw a very last minute feast together.  I was already in the process of making cornbread dressing and the good thing about living in another country on Thanksgiving is all the stores are open!!  The guys headed to the store and got some roasted chickens while us ladies got to work!  The only thing I really missed was having sweet potatoes. I've seen them, I just forgot them!  How could I when it's one of my favorites!!  Oh well.  We'll remedy that for Christmas!  Otherwise we had a nice little feast of chicken, dressing, green bean casserole, rolls and mock cranberry sauce.  What is our mock cranberry sauce you ask??  Why, lingonberry sauce from IKEA!  It's a great substitute!

We finished off the meal with pumpkin crumble, which was such a breeze to make last minute!  The rest of the day was just spent relaxing and catching up with old friends!

 By Saturday Karis was feeling better, but unfortunately the temperatures outside started to dip and no one was really up for braving the cold, plus our friends hadn't brought much in the way of cold weather gear.  So what did we do? Why headed to Starbucks, of course!!  The Starbucks in our town has some of those little kiddie rides that you pay a euro.  My kids have just as much fun climbing around on them without paying any money.  So, the kids played while the parents sipped away on their Starbucks drink of choice!

This was one of those weekends where I got to chatting away so much that the camera was just about forgotten.  I did get a few our last day together!

With 5 kids it seems like we did LOTS of eating!

Good Buds!

The boys, Steve & Jerry

And the girls, me & Julie

I took them to the airport this morning.  We were sad to see them go!  But, it's time to get back to life as normal!  Hope you all had a very blessed Thanksgiving!