Our church had a Thanksgiving party, so we packed up some turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie and headed over to the dinner. Oliver hadn’t taken a nap, and fell asleep just before we arrived. He spent the first half of the party asleep on the chapel floor.
We had a great multi-culteral somewhat untraditional spread for our Thanksgiving dinner! It is always great to come to our church parties, the food is awesome. The kids wouldn’t know, I think Elora had an apple and some cookies for dinner…
More food! I tried a new pumpkin pie recipe for the dinner and it turned out great! I even had multiple people ask for the recipe. Thank you Paula Deen and everyone who has given me canned pumpkin and sweetened condensed milk in the last year, since you can’t really buy those here.
Marion was making friends with Heidi – all kids love Heidi!
Here is Oliver with his new friend Elizabeth. He and Elora had a fun time running around with the other kids.
Chris brought a little video to present at the dinner. I love how kids are drawn to the magic glowing box… Here is Elora and Charlotte checking out the Thanksgiving video. We also had the chance to listen to some presentations from friends at church. Each person was from a different country and shared something about their country’s culture that they are thankful for that has strengthened them as a person. I am thankful for the chance we have had to make friends with people from all over the world. 
After the party we stopped by the Karlsplatz Christmas market to see one of our friends who has a booth there and to show Grandma around. Karlsplatz looks so beautiful at night!
Here we are checking out all the expensive hand made arts and crafts… I love looking around at this market, even if I can rarely afford to buy anything!
Oliver saw this little train ride and had to ride it (even though we had just gotten off the bus and were about to go ride a real train…) The kids loved it, of course, and were sad they only got to go once. Luckily they got distracted by the hay in front of the church!
There is a big fountain in front of the Karlskirche, and every Christmas season they drain it and fill it with hay for the market. During the day there are pony rides and sheep to look at. But even without the animals, the kids were plenty entertained by the hay they got to roll around in and build forts out of.
Oliver helped build this big fort and then tried to hide inside when it was time to leave. We will have to come back to this market when we have more time to play!
