Thanksgiving on Saturday

Living here in the Farm Drive area we have obviously been doing a lot of different activities with the kids from the hood. Patty and I wanted to do something to involve the adults for once. So we came up with the idea of having some families over for a Thanksgiving meal. On Saturday we cooked up a bunch of traditional Thanksgiving food and had a few of our friends come over and help. Below was a team effort; peeling potatoes. The guy with the glasses is Ruben who cooked us 2 deep fried turkeys! They were delicious! Thank you Ruben!

We had orginally invited 3 families to join us and as the day went on and some of them could not make it, we just started inviting kids and told them to go home and invite their parents, siblings, basically whoever lives with them.

Below we are giving thanks (not everyone is in the picture...we had 46!) for the food we had to share with our neighborhood friends!


We had a buffet table set up in one of the downstairs rooms and used all 3 ovens/stoves at our disposal to cook a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, and rolls. Pretty nice having 3 complete kitchens! It would have been hard to do that out of one place with one stove! We ate outside on the tables.

We fed over 45 people! It was awesome time but a lot of hard work. One of the kids moms said she was very thankful for the meal and she had never had a meal like this in any neighborhood. This was very strange for her, sharing a meal together. Here's Patty and Cece enjoying some of Ruben's delicious chicken.

Friday Night

Our daughter, Jessica, was able to come home for Thanksgiving week. Friday night was her last night here before having to return to LA. She wanted to have a bunch of her friends over so we opened up the Center for the evening to allow both the neighborhood kids to play and Jessica's friends play and sit around the firepit. It was a fairly cold night, so the fire was nice to have around for people to keep warm.

We brought out the marshmellows, chocolate, graham crackers and the marshmellow sticks to do the favorite kid snack - s'mores. I guess it's a combination of eating all that sugar and the opportunity to burn something which makes this such a popular thing to do!

Add in a couple of games of Knockout and Jumprope, and that makes it a fun evening of bringing all these different people together.

Bible Club

Last week at Saturday Bible Club, Joe Brown, our new senior pastor came by with his family to help out. During free time he found a skateboard and was playing around. (an excellent boarder to be sure). The kids loved watching him do some amazing moves.

Game night

On saturday November 10, the Gathering college group challenged the Fellowship class to a game nite. Since we had to play table type games the Gathering lost for the second year in a row. We were hoping to play Dodgeball but for some reason they turned us down. We were hoping since it was the only game we stood a chance.

Capitola

Patty and I were able to get away for the weekend (November 2-4) to Capitola for our anniversary. Our anniversary was actually back in September but we have very seldom been able to celebrate on or near that date! We were able to get away for the weekend and stayed at this condo right on the beach. For those of you familiar with Capitola it's the front row of colored houses and it's the far one on the left. Beautiful! We stayed on the lower level and the owner lives upstairs. She has owned this place for nearly 50 years. It was an ok place (kinda rustic on the inside) but it opened right onto the beach which was what made it awesome!

It was a beautiful weekend weather-wise. It was in the 80's both days with no fog. One night we walked to the store, bought some groceries and then ate outside the beach house while watching the sunset. It doesn't get much better than that! Beautiful sunrises on both days and here is one of the many pictures we took right from our front porch!

Halloween

On Halloween we (along with some other young college age people) opened up the Center. We had lots of food, pizza, brownies, cookies and cake thanks to Stacy's aunt! A bunch of kids came early for the food and then went out into the night to score some candy. Let me rephrase that - scored a lot of candy!

Here we are out doling out the food. What a feast!

A few others did not go out trick or treating so we lit the fire pit and had smores, hot chocolate, dough boys and apple cider. A few of the trick or treaters came by and joined us for awhile. Hot chocolate is nice when you're out in the cold. Most of the kids left the neighborhood to go trick or treating so most did not come back but a few did.

Festival

On Sunday the 28th of October, Hillside Church put on a festival for kids that had jump houses, face painting, sail boat races, soap box derby races, and lots of food and candy. We walked with about 10 kids from FD over to the church. A bunch more showed up there with their parents which was cool. At the end they had a story time about David and Goliath. Here is a picture of Javier having some bounce house fun.

Maria getting serious about her face painting, err, I mean arm painting?

Reuben and Jose enjoying a lighter moment with Cubbie. Cubbie doesn't seem so sure about this.

A few other kids waiting in line for the jump house.