Thanksgiving 2008

Well here I am playing catch up as usual. So much has happened since my last post. I have a million pictures I want to put up, so I've finally decided that today is the day to start before I get even further behind. Here is the photo story of our Thanksgiving trip to visit my family in St. Louis. I uploaded all the pictures in the wrong order and am too lazy to reorder them since there are so many. So here is our trip from finish to start.

I had a hairbrained idea that it would be fun to make all the little girls matching aprons. So I spent several days before our trip making these cute aprons. I made 7 in all, and somehow didn't manage to get a picture of all the girls wearing them, but here are a few. They were adorable.

This is Lauryn, Julia, Abbie, and Alexis.

After Thanksgiving dinner the kids made this cute little craft. They each had a apple, and punched toothpicks all over one end. Then they piled each toothpick with fruitloops, and topped it off with a marshmallow to keep the fruitloops on. Then they colored a turkey head and attatched it to the front side. They were really cute, and even Luke spent quite a while working on one.

These are two of my nieces, Alexis and Julia.

Reese and Lauryn with their turkeys.

Here are Carter and Alec enjoying a nice jacuzzi bath.

So of course when I got to my parents house and showed my mom and Betsy the little aprons I had made for the girls, we decided that we all wanted one. So we headed off to JoAnn Fabrics, bought fabric, and spent all our spare time over the next couple days whipping these out.

Here's our annual attempt at making gingerbread houses. Abbie's beating up the frosting.

Abbie and Chad buiding a masterpiece.

Alec is proud of his creation.

Reese is all done.

Here's the whole lineup.

The babies were so cute. After we finished and lined them all up, and took our pictures, the babies all climbed right up on the stools and started picking little treats off the houses. They thought they had hit the jackpot. Well, it wouldn't be a reunion without several projects. Angi showed up with a darling scarf she had knitted, so off we went to Micheals to buy our supplies. She taught us all how to knit. I ended up making 4 scarves. They are really cute.

Oh, and of course, the Karaoke reared it's little head more than once. Everyone took a stab at it.

Here are my dad and Lauryn.

My mom and Angi.

Reese and Grant loved it the most of all.

Abbie had her 9th birthday while we were there. We through her a fun little party with all her cousins.

Abbie, Aunt Betsy, and Liv.

We opened a few presents, played a few games.

And of course had a lovely little brownie cake with the only candles we could scrounge up since I forgot to buy more.
Luke and Elyse with Papa Kent.

Here's the crew at the McDonald's playland. Luke kept getting stuck up top and squealling like a little piglet. We reverted back to his Indian name from the summer "Screeching Hawk".
I left for St. Louis a few days early with just Luke and Alec. And Betsy came with just Liv and Gwen. So we had a little while to just hang out with our four little ones before anyone else came. It was a lot of fun. And they happen to be just the same ages. Here we are at the zoo.

Alec, Luke, Gwen, and Liv.

More of the zoo. Monkey see monkey do.

There is a cute little children's room at the zoo with all sorts of fun stations.

Here's Papa and his two side kicks.

Grandma cuddling and watching a movie before bed.

It was another great Thanksgiving holiday.