Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Thanksgiving, Christmas and Birthdays...OH MY!

"I was thinking that you guys should come for Thanksgiving and we can celebrate Christmas and Mom's 65th birthday!"  That was all I needed to hear.  The thought of being with all my siblings, nieces and nephews (on my side of the family)...I knew we had to be there! It doesn't happen often enough!  It would also be extra special for Mom to have all of her kids and grand kids together for her birthday! How perfect! 

 I am SO thankful for these people!  I love and miss them SO much!!
(Yes, and the ones not in this picture!  They are in the following pictures!)

Check out that Thanksgiving spread!  We are such spoiled people!


This right here...it makes me happy!  I hate that I don't get to do this more often with my family, so I try to soak it all in and enjoy it as much as I can!

 All of the cousins!

 This just makes me happy!

 So... since we were all together, we thought it was the perfect time to exchange Christmas gifts.  This way we could watch everyone open them in person and not have to pay to ship gifts.  It was so fun to do it this way.  Just another thing to be thankful for.

The cousin gift exchange.

 The sibling gift exchange.

 My family opened gifts from Grammy.

 Lukey and Grammy :)
Poor Roxie!  As if it wasn't bad enough that she had a house full of people and chaos, then she had to put on the dreaded reindeer antlers!  Poor thing!
 
Mom had no idea that we were planning to celebrate her birthday!  I think she was pretty surprised when the girls brought over her birthday cupcakes!

 
You have no idea how crazy this was to see!  Mom does NOT like dogs!  However, she bought this bed for Roxie and actually invited her to come sit up there with her.  Crazy!  I think she secretly likes Roxie!

 We went downtown Indianapolis to check out the shop that Rebecca was selling her products in during the Christmas season.  It was a cool little shop!




 The guys!

With All-State auditions fast approaching, Ben couldn't miss any precious practice time, so he brought his trombone on the trip.  Abby didn't want to miss out on any All-District practice time either.
It was fun when they wanted to play for us!  Bring on the Christmas carols!!

Nolan was pretty impressed by the sounds of the instruments and thrilled when Ben offered to let him play his horn.  Maybe another trombone player in the family?

This trip was amazing!  I had the best time visiting, laughing like crazy and just hanging out with my family!  I am so thankful that we were able to make the trip!  Precious memories!