Thanksgiving with the Steiners

What a wonderful Thanksgiving we had this year--amazing food, wonderful friends, and a lot of laughs! Here are some pictures of our couple days at a wonderful lake house on a small little lake in Texas.

Just hanging out on the couch

Our friends Jonathan and Yana--and Baby Andrus arriving in May!

Andy and Elisabeth, and their dog Tyson. If you knew Andy, you would know he is always silly!!

Now, for a little tour of the house...

The kitchen...

The living room--great tv!

The dining area--the living and dining area are open to each other--a great room for a group of people!

Tyson, Andy and Elisabeth's dog, is such a great dog. He was so mellow, and you just can't beat this face!!

Outside, from the back porch, looking down towards the lake.

Another view of this amazing property!!!

The grill area...

The back of the house...

Gazebo area...

And the two-story boathouse!!!!

Complete with a diving board, waterslide, and a second story deck you can jump off into the water. I bet it's so much fun in the summer time!

The upstairs is a big game room, and the downstairs has a boat and 3 jet-skis.

And then, while the food was cooking.... it was the Men VS....

The trashcan. It was about an hour of 3 all out games of Pig/Horse (with acorns), and I'm happy to say that Justin won all three! =) Then came the fun part...Betsy had never been in a lake (or any kind of water for that matter) and we took this opportunity to send her for a little swim. Here she comes racing down the path...

And then for the big moment...

In she went...

And she wasn't too happy. Look at that face!!!

Then she decided that it was just a great big water bowl and she was thirsty.

Click play to see Betsy try to figure out what she was supposed to do!

She couldn't really figure out what to do, and finally Tyson (standing behind Justin) came to the rescue and led her out.

I wanted to actually see her swim, so we put her in a little deeper water. She was so cute, and can doggy-paddle!!

But that was enough, and she was done!

Our little princess dried off, and was exhausted for the rest of the day!! We were so glad that Betsy did a great job out at the lake. She is never around other dogs, or without a leash outside. She had so much fun with the other two dogs and was so well-behaved! She for sure had a fun Thanksgiving! Especially with the many table scraps she was given!!

Here was our table set up for the big meal...

I made a special centerpiece to honor our babies. For Andy and Elisabeth, a pink cup for Estella, for Jonathan and Yana, a white cup for the baby they lost at 13 weeks, and for Jonathan, a blue cup. We wanted to include our babies into this special day, and will keep their memories alive during future holidays!

Here is the spread of ALL the food we had!

Yana, posing at the table...

and the cooks! It was so much fun to cook with these girls!

After dinner, and watching the Cowboy game, we had fun playing about 3 hours of games! Didn't get too many pictures here, but we had A LOT of laughs!!!

The end of the night--we realized that we had both brought our Hope shirts (our church is called Hope) so we had to take a quick picture!

All in all, this was a wonderful Thanksgiving. We were all so happy to be together, and do something completely different. I'm so thankful that God has given us friends to share this part of our life with. Even though we wish we all hadn't met under these circumstances, we are so glad to have each other!