Thanksgiving Day, Lifeline Gifts Project, and Weekend Activities

It’s been 2 years since our last Thanksgiving gathering/reunion, so we decided to do it again this year! Seven of the nine Morley siblings and their families were able to gather here in Missouri for Thanksgiving and a few days afterwards. Uncle Craig’s found a nice community building locally that we were able to rent for Thanksgiving Day. Several of the girls went over Thanksgiving morning to decorate, and get things set up.

The decorating committee — Susanna, Bethany, Carrie, and Natasha.
They did a beautiful job of decorating!
The Morley family memorabilia table!
The Brenton Morley family a long time ago! ๐Ÿ™‚
Lots of cooks in the kitchen!
Lots of visiting going on while the food was finished being prepared.
There was no shortage of people to hold Levi! ๐Ÿ™‚
Amaris was able to come over for a short while over lunch time. Tasha made this beautiful dress for her, especially for Thanksgiving.
The dessert table!
After lunch, most of the children and young people headed outdoors for some games. Lots of fun was had as we played kickball, kick-the-can, dodge ball, and tug-of-war.

Once it got dark, we moved indoors for some inside games.

A lively Dutch Blitz game!
A cousin stack! L to R: Carrie Morley, Hannah Lucas, Elisabeth Jackman, Laura Bradford, and Lydia Jackman
Candace headed up a fun Thanksgiving Trivia game with the younger children.
Ladies/girls against the men/boys in a fun Thanksgiving Random game that Aunt Anna headed up!

We finished out the evening with this hilarious game that Natasha and Candace organized! Brothers and sisters teamed up with the girl behind the boy, acting as the boy’s hands but without being able to see anything. The boys can see, and can only talk to help the girls as they fed them yogurt out of little cups.

Here they are after they switched places with the boys, attempting to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and then feeding them to the girls. It was very entertaining and very messy, to put it mildly! ๐Ÿ™‚

The day after Thanksgiving, the young ladies and girls (and a couple moms) got together at our place to put together layette bundles for a local ministry that works with women considering abortion. Here’s an excerpt from Amaris’ website on her vision for these bundles. “Recently the Lord has given me a new idea to start putting together small mom/baby gifts to be given out to moms who have chosen to save their babies. Our first project has been to partner with a local mission that ministers to women outside a late term abortion mill. We put these bundles together for Christmas of 2020. This is hopefully just the beginning of the partnerships we will form. I have a great team that helps me with shopping for the items and assembling them into bundles. We canโ€™t wait to see what God has in store for this newest facet of Lifeline Gifts!” Check out this link lifelinegifts.com to see a video Amaris put together of our day!

Each girl brought different items and then we all worked together to take tags off and organize everything in piles to make the process go more efficiently.

After everything had been organized and everyone had arrived, Amaris prayed for the Lord to bless our efforts before we began our project.

Candace demonstrating how to put organize and wrap the items to make it into a bundle.

Some girls gathered the items for the bundles, and others had the job of wrapping the items into bundles.

Candace and Hannah made a great team!
All done!
And a picture with Amaris, the person behind all this work! Without her vision and dedication this would have never come about!
Susanna and I were kinda the ones in charge of the food preparation! All the girls contributed by bringing food items for a nice little luncheon after the work was done!
Susanna put together this delectable plate, which we ate along with fruits and vegies, delicious ham and cheese sliders, and some wonderful mini cheesecakes, thanks to Candace and Charity!

Later that day, everyone headed over to Grandpa and Grandma’s place for a group photo.

Some of the young people raked lots of leaves while we were there, and put them into a big pile to burn.

These girls decided to get a ride among the leaves!
Cousins make the best friends!
Three out of the four cousins born in the year 2001. Bethany Morley, Pearl, and Rose Lucas (Just missing Mercy, Aunt Dorcas’ daughter.)
Candace on the left holding Levi, and Susanna on the right holding Uncle Gabriel’s youngest, sweet Ellianna.
Best buddies! (Benjamin Morley, Caleb Bradford, and Matthew Jackman.)

On Saturday, we cousins took a 4.8 hike (both ways) down a trail to Cave Spring which is on the Current River.

We made quite the procession as all 27 of us walked single file down the trail!
And here is Cave Spring!

We sang a few songs while we were in the cave, and the acoustics were amazing! Some people nearby heard us and came running over to see what was going on! They wanted us to sing “Amazing Grace” for them! That was a neat experience!

We stopped for lunch and a group picture before heading hiking back.

Jed and Rosalie and children stayed at our place over the weekend. Levi gets cuter every day!

On Sunday, we all gathered at the “Chapel on the Lake” for Sunday morning worship. Unfortunately, Grandpa Morley’s health took a turn for the worse over the weekend, and he was taken to the hospital Saturday night. Because no one was allowed in the hospital with him and his condition was quite serious, it was a rather difficult time for all. But we had a very blessed service that morning, worshiping and praising God for His goodness through it all! Thank the Lord that Grandpa did get better, and is doing fairly well with biweekly dialysis treatments.

Several of the families graced us with a special song!

Uncle Gabriel’s family
Aunt Kezia and girls.

I’ll end this lengthy post with this sweet picture of my little cousin Aaron!

Till next time,
Pearl

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