Thanksgiving in California

Back in the summer Willis and I made the decision to look into spending Thanksgiving in California with our extended family. Although we'd been there for most Thanksgivings over the last 15 years, 2005 had been the last. We realized this would be quite the undertaking since Nathan is in Germany, but Willis went to work! He began looking at airplane tickets and coordinated all the flights to arrive/depart to/from Reno, Nevada within hours of each other: Willis, Hannah, and I flew from St Louis, Missouri; Ben, Bethany, and Josh flew from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Nathan flew from Frankfurt, Germany.

We spent the first half of our week in Chester, California with Ideal (Willis's sister) and Les. Ralph (Willis's brother) and Cecilia did drive up from Woodlake for part of the weekend and we did get to see Kurt (Ideal's son) for a few hours. We loved seeing Lassen National Park again!

The second half we were in Alturas, California with Carolyn (Melodee's sister) and Johnny, their children Jacob, Janel, and John up from Redding, and Melodee's parents. Thanksgiving day included the original thirteen--family members (namely 2 Burris + 6 Chapman + 5 Hughes) not colonies :-)--plus Josh and Stephanie and Tanner and Les and Ideal. O, and Lilly and Bella too! This was a major first: dogs inside my parents' house!!! My parents were very gracious and the dogs were very well behaved.

God provided a most wonderful Thanksgiving for us.