Thanksgiving!! Party time!

I absolutely LOVE Thanksgiving and this year did not disappoint! We packed up our truck and headed down to my parents to stay the weekend. Because we had so many people (including 8 kids under 6) packed under one roof for days on end, we had to get creative with our activities this year. It turned out to be tons of fun and I can't even begin to explain how grateful I am to belong to the family that I do!

Being the cute and creative woman she is, my mom "planted" a gratitude tree and we all wrote down things we were grateful for on one of the leaves.

I realize there are so many things in my life to be grateful for, much more than I could possible fit on this little leaf. So in reflecting on this past year, I decided to make my gratitude note about medical blessings, which then brings me to these two...

We have seen countless blessings and miracles with Eden and Michael over the past year and I can't begin to express how grateful I am for the medical technology and wonderful doctors who have kept these two with us!

Here are a few random pictures of some of the fun...










The food was delicious and the kids were anxious to get on with dessert!




My little book worms made sure to save lots of time for reading.



There was lots of play dough action...


And the kids even got to make bird feeders to hang out in the trees. Now if only all the birds wouldn't have flown south we may have had a bird Thanksgiving too! Oh well, the kids had fun anyway and it kept them busy for about 2.3 minutes.


Knowing how stir crazy we all get after being trapped inside together for hours on end, my mom signed up to use the church gym Friday evening and it turned out to be so much fun! The kids loved running around crazy and we all got lots of opportunity to burn some calories from the previous day's feast!

My brother-in-law Camren's family joined us at the church and his cute sister lead us in some Zumba...

The husbands played some angry games of dodgeball on one side while the kids played a nice game of duck, duck goose on the other...

Then we cranked up the ipods and did some dancing! Even Michael got in on the action with the Cotton-Eye-Joe.



Because we will all be with our in-laws for Christmas this year, we also celebrated Christmas together. Seriously, how much better can it get - Thanksgiving feast and presents!! :)

We all got these fabulous matching bathrobes. Cute right? :)


Making ginger bread houses was a huge hit with the kids.



Michael went a little creative with his and decided to make a ginger bread coffin for the ginger bread marshmellows. Weirdo. But I must say, he did a pretty darn good job!


Each night after the kids went to bed we finally got some adult time and played tons of games. We had some serious laughter going on and it was so much fun! Thanks to my family for making this Thanksgiving such a memorable one!