Let's Go Fly a Kite

(I'm going to spend this next week going through the 2000 pictures taken over Thanksgiving and blogging about our fun holiday with family. I know this won't be interesting to some of you, so consider yourself forewarned.)

I almost don't know where to begin to blog about this past week, so I think I'll skip ahead to Saturday afternoon. My dad had made a couple of kites (with some gracious last minute sewing help from their "friends-since-before-I-was-born-friend", Colyn.) There are very few people who will sew kites for you two days before Thanksgiving, while trying to plan a Thanksgiving feast for 30 of your closest relatives, and I am very thankful that Colyn is one of those people.

And why didn't we sew the kites ourselves? Oh, we are, with few exception, not a crafty people. Except for Lindy. My sister Lindy is semi-crafty, and at one point this past week she convinced me that we were going to make felt flower hair clips for our girls together. Sounds simple enough. Trace flowers onto felt, cut flowers out, hot glue flowers strategically to hair clip for instant cuteness.

So cute, right? (And baby Nora's not bad, either!)

Turns out, I am only good at the "tracing the flowers" part of the craft. I cut little flowers out of felt for about 20 minutes and I wanted to stab myself in the eyeball with the scissors. And my flowers looked a little bit like stars. I am not cut out for any type of craft that requires cutting small shapes. There are many reasons why I am not an elementary school teacher, and the cutting stuff out part is just one of them. But, surprisingly, the felt flowers cut out by the remedial scissor-user turned out pretty cute!

Back to all the kite flying. Pappy made a couple of kites before we got to town, and we just had to polish them up a bit to make them fly-ready.

Yes, that is my husband wielding a blow-torch at the kitchen table over Thanksgiving, while small children looked on in wonderment. A few minutes later, the Yellow Jacket and Red Dragon ready for their debut, we headed out into the incoming cold front, complete with near-freezing temperatures, cold wind, and a little drizzle to fly the kites in Colyn's made-for-kites backyard.

It was the highlight of the week for Dane, and with the exception of some very memorable tacos in Aidan's book, his favorite activity as well. (Seriously. They flied kites, shot BB guns, played front yard football, put pennies on the train track, and played with their cousins all weekend, and Aidan's favorite part of the trip was "going to that taco place".) Harper actually busted out the "Let's Go Fly a Kite" song from Mary Poppins, and she thought she was just so cute and big.

The kites were a big hit. Red Dragon went up first, and an unfortunate crash landing ended his high-flying dreams for good on that windy Saturday. Yellow Jacket had a chance to shine, and the kids each got a turn to fly the kite.

Emerson was the only one who almost got a little "carried away".

Of course the men of my family fashioned a parachute and miniature video camera to float up the kite line. That's not a part of everyone's kite-flying experience?

After Yellow Jacket crashed across the street, Uncle John and I took the little kids home for some lunch and hot chocolate, while the big boys, Pappy, Brandon, and Uncle Andy logged some more kite time and got Aidan some tacos.

More to come from our fun Thanksgiving break later this week!