A Thanksgiving Reunion

We celebrated a memorable Thanksgiving this year, with my entire family gathering at my parent's house for a week!  It was loud and fun, with tons and tons of cousin bonding.  12 adults and 10 kids (A 10-year-old, 8-year-old, 6-year-old, then the other seven were 4 and under).  Besides for a few occasions of troublemaking, the kids were awesome buddies, and it's pretty special to watch your children form friendships with your siblings' kids.

Playing outside with his cousins, wearing cousin Tori's hat.  :)

Gwen playing with Clara.  

My niece, Gwen, is the oldest, and she was so, so good at including Eli in her activities.  She played a lot of make-believe "school", and I'd find them in the basement having a ball.  She was also attentive to and so sweet with Clara.

Since the major chunk of the fam came from the west coast, those kiddos went to bed much later than ours.  So there wasn't a whole lotta game-playing time, but the bit we got each night was a blast.  It was also enjoyable just sitting and chatting with each other.  My faraway sisters and I are all busy moms, and it can be hard to stay in touch as well as we'd like.  It's always so nice to have that time to reconnect.

Thanksgiving day our group split, as Becky and I did visits with our in-laws, and Em's family arrived late in the day.  So we did our Metheny meal on Friday.  We squeezed tables and chairs together so we could all eat in one spot.  The meal was delicious, and afterwards we shared reading each other's thankful lists.

Saturday we headed up to Fishers to visit Conner Prairie, since my mom has a membership there and all the kids were free.  It had some special exhibits open for the holidays, where we could go around outside and see what an old-fashioned Christmas would have been like for the townspeople in their homes and shops.  Thankfully the weather was mild enough that day for the outing.  One home we stopped in had an old piano with a few sheets of Christmas carols spread out.  Somehow I ended up playing those carols while Ryan, Beth, and Becky sang behind me.  We had a little audience crowded in that small room, and even though it was hard to read the smudged notes, the Christmas spirit was alive and merry.

 Also while out in the village there was a flock of wild turkeys just roaming around.  We were able to go right up to them and pet them, then all of a sudden they'd all "gobble gobble gobble" loudly and simultaneously.  It was hilarious!  Such a unique show.

Eli playing with cousin Ben

Eli & Gwen feeding the horse

Clara finally let Beth hold her!  She was very clingy to me or David most of the time.

On the way back to my parent's, everyone stopped at our house to see it (some for the first time), then they all drove by the temple in Carmel, which is on its way to completion.

Sunday we all managed to make it to 9am church.  All that is, except David and Clara.  Clara had begun having a croup-like cough in the nights that we were there.  Sunday morning she also had a fever.  She was a very, very sad and miserable girl that week.  All of the people and noises seemed to really overwhelm her, and she obviously felt very crummy.  She slept horrible every night, waking up and crying frequently.  We'd try to bring her to our bed (the four of us shared a room, with Clara in a closet), but she wasn't used to it and would just sit up and poke our faces.

Right after church we attempted some photos.  It was really windy outside, and of course just hard to take a picture with that many faces.  David just used his tripod, but it would have been smart to have had one pair of eyes to make sure everyone was always visible.

Everyone was supposed to visit our extended family in Terre Haute Sunday afternoon, but our cousin had his new baby, so it was pushed out a day.  So instead we made a quick decision to have Christmas  a day ahead of schedule.  It was a crazy whirlwind of wrapping presents, decorating the tree, getting stockings filled, etc.  While Mom and Dad set up the final touches in the family room, the rest of us gathered for carol-singing in the living room.

It felt just like Christmas morning when we all opened our stockings!  Always fun to be around the kids' excitement.

Late Monday afternoon the gang headed to the delayed trip to Terre Haute.  As much as we wanted to be with everyone, we decided to hang back because Clara was still sick.  :(  So the four of us visited the Greenwood Public Library.  We didn't get any pictures, but it was amazing!  So, so many imaginary activities set up for kids to play!  I was so jealous we didn't have anything near as good here in Westfield or Carmel.

Ryan's fam was the first to leave, early Tuesday morning.  The time together always goes by too fast!  The rest of us headed to the Children's Museum that day.  Clara was doing a little better, but not great, so we knew we probably shouldn't have gone, but it was too hard to miss out on another thing when it was our last time to spend together!  While we were at the museum, Eli developed a fever and was very run-down.  We had to say our goodbyes early and left to go back to our house (since it was on the way).

Both Eli and Clara dealt with pretty vicious coughs/colds, but we are SO thankful we were able to spend that terrific time with family.  Many wonderful memories were made, and we're already trying to plan out our next get-together!