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!

Family Road Trip ~ Indiana Bound!

I, seriously, couldn't wait for this trip.  It had been almost two years since we had been to Indiana, Kris just moved into a new house and Alex graduated from high school.  Despite the 10 hour drive, I couldn't wait to go!

Of course, nothing we do can go smoothly.  We had the van in the shop to get something fixed before hitting the road.  Wouldn't you know...it wasn't ready in time.  Ugh!  We decided that we would just get a late start.  Who says we had to be on the road at 6:00am?  Ok.  I was ok with that.  Well, after talking to the guy at the car place, Jon found out that our van wouldn't be ready to be picked up until 1:30ish.  Seriously?!  Ok, that meant a serious change of plans.  I really didn't want to wait another whole day to leave.  I was dying to go!  The packing was all done and we were, literally, just sitting around waiting to leave. We talked about leaving after picking up the van and just driving halfway.  But then that would require paying for a hotel.  Bummer!  Oh yeah!  "Jon, do you have any hotel points we could use?"  "YES!"  Phew!  Jon's travels to the rescue!  He had just enough points for a hotel stay!  Sweet!!  Thank you, Lord!  On the road we go!

Stopping halfway was a great idea.  Breaking up the trip made 10 hours in the van not seem so bad. 

We finally made it to Indianapolis and were ready for the task of getting ready for Alex's graduation party.

 Everyone helped!  It is so true that "many hands make light work"!  Kris couldn't believe how fast everything was getting done.  I was just happy to finally be able to help.  The one thing I hate about living far away is that I am never around to help.  I was so happy!

 Ok, so maybe not everyone helped.  (:  The girls had to paint their nails for the party!  To be honest, I was couldn't be happier to see these three painting their nails together.  They don't get to see each other often enough. This is, totally, what they should be doing together!

 These kids had so much fun playing together!

It made my heart so happy to see them all playing together so nicely!

Aunt Kris was more than willing to take a break to snuggle with Luke as he woke up from his nap!

Grammy took the boys to her house for a sleepover.  Fun times!

One of the things that Ben was most excited about on this trip was to get Aunt Becca's old saxophone.  He couldn't wait to try it out.  It needs some serious work since it hasn't been played in 16 years, but he was excited, just the same!

PARTY TIME!!

It was so nice to see so many people that I hadn't seen in so long!  There were some people I hadn't seen in so long that they had never met Luke!  Crazy!  I hate that it takes a big event to see some people, but it makes the time together that much more meaningful.

I love this girl!  I can't believe she is done with high school!

After the "formal" graduation open house, family and close friends headed over to Kris and Scott's house for more visiting time.  Thank goodness for their amazing back yard!  So much fun for everyone!

Uncle Brian bought all of the boys Detroit Tigers shirts and had to have a picture of all of them.  Could these boys be any cuter???

Since we don't all get to be together very often, we (well, it might just be me...) hate to miss an opportunity to take lots of pictures.  The last time we did this was at Nolan's first birthday, so it was definitely time for some updated pictures!

It took a lot of tries to get some pictures that actually turned out good.  

Here are my favorites:

Beth, Kris's best friend since elementary school, and her son, Collin,  were so much fun to hang out with.  Some of the nicest people I have known!

I forced the cousins to get their pictures taken together too.  Seriously SO cute!  I love these kids!!  (We are missing Haley, or this would be all of the cousins.)

Silly pic (:

Grammy and my boys.

We went over to Grammy's house and played for a little bit. (:

The girlies :)

Taking advantage of snuggles!

Oh. My. Goodness!  I just love looking at all of these pictures!  I love my family SO much!  I hate living so far away!!

Abby liked to make sure we knew that it was her birthday week.  We decided to have a little surprise party for her since we were with family.

She was pretty surprised!

I can't believe that this girl is going to be a teenager in a few short days!

This is where we spent a lot of time for the week.  The perfect place to hang out!

I really wasn't ready to come back home!  I had so much fun all week long!  I was so happy to hang out with family.  I was thrilled with the way that all of the kids got along.  Even Luke was a pure gem!  He always had someone to play with.  Nobody ever complained that they were bored or that anybody was being mean.  It was just awesome!

I couldn't be more thankful for the time that I had to spend with family!  I hope it won't be too long until we can all be together again!