Thanksgiving Lagniappe

A few days ago I shared some pictures of the Japanese Maple tree in our courtyard.   It was at its most glorious and we enjoyed its bright crimson leaves for several days.  [If you would like to see more pictures and read the post, you can click on this link: The Beauty Around Us ] This is the way the tree looked yesterday, after being battered by wind and rain over the weekend ... Most of its beautiful red leaves are now a carpet underneath it ...   The leaves were also scattered around the courtyard and some rested on the rocks around our waterfall.   Our granddaughter Avery Grace is coming tomorrow to spend a couple of days with us before the rest of the family joins us for Thanksgiving, and I think it will be fun for us to gather a few of these beautiful leaves to press for keepsakes. Claude and Maude, who live underneath the maple tree, seem to be happy in their beautiful red blanket of leaves.  I'm sure they will be very thankful for them when a cold front brings more rain, and possibly some snow, to Vicksburg later today.   I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving week, wherever you are, and enjoy your preparations for the holidays. I'm thankful that I can have some time with Avery Grace, just the two of us, and look forward to making some sweet memories with her.  Here are some I captured from Thanksgivings Past ... Admiring the centerpiece she helped me make ... Chopping celery on a little chopping block that was her great-great grandmother's ... (that's a steak knife she's using, not a paring knife, by the way.) Watching and waiting patiently while her granddaddy carved the turkey ... Ever so carefully pouring her Sprite, while her great-grandmother looks on ... I'm looking forward to capturing some new Thanksgiving memories of Avery and her little brother Maddox.  They are two of the many, many blessings we have to be thankful for this year.