Thanksgiving

Annette needed to be in Illinois for conferences in Charleston and Springfield the week before Thanksgiving, so they decided to spend the holidays at Larry's dad's place in Clarksburg.

Birthday Boys

When we get together at Thanksgiving, we often celebrate Sylvester's and Larry's birthdays at the same time.

We gave Sylvester a set of playing cards on wooden tiles like dominoes. We'd seen these at an arts fair in Estes Park and thought they might be easier to manipulate than traditional cards. We enjoyed playing a game of Oh Heck with these wooden cards.

Christmas Celebration

We went right into Christmas celebrations this year since we weren't going to be coming back to Illinois during the holidays.

We got to see and visit with Larry's older brother, Bob and wife Sue who drove up from their Fairview Heights home. Younger brother's family (Keith, Jill, Sarah and Emma) also stopped by on another evening.

The big gift of the year was Ben's new Dell laptop computer. A Christmas / graduation gift, we decided that he needed the laptop for student teaching Spring semester. He has been limping along with Larry's '98 hand-me-down desktop system.

Year of DVDs

This was also a year for gift DVDs. Annette got March of the Penguins and Larry got a couple of great PBS documentaries and Office Space (One of his all-time favorites). Brooke got the first season of Murder She Wrote and Ben received the first season of MacGyver. We sent Blake one set of the Best of Saturday Night Live series.

Cranium

Larry's younger sister, Pat, and husband Ralph and their two girls joined us for Thanksgiving day. The girls (Pat, Annette, Amanda and Ashley) always enjoy playing Cranium. We purchased a deluxe edition to leave at the Clarksburg house.