Thanksgiving!

Where to begin? I don't even know. Thanksgiving was just awesome. As most holiday's at home are, it was full of fun, and loud crazy chaos. The kids has a WONDERFUL time. And my camera battery died after my first day there, without taking many pictures... Bummer! I did take some on Hannie's camera, but not near as many as I would have liked. However, I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Ella was in heave to hold Baby Claire. I swear she must have said about a million times to Amanda, "I wike (like) baby Cwaire (Claire)". We're all pretty smitten with that chubby baby!

There was lots of talking and cooking. Mom and Maya are making a pie in the picture below while Jenna works on something else. Nothing like letting the little ones do the work Amanda and Hannie!

We had the kids peel potatoes. I wish I thought peeling potatoes was as fun as the kids do (and notice how they got fancied up for the job. Mom bought all these prom dresses in like size 0 that were on clearance for the girls to play in. They were in heaven I tell ya!)

Grant swept in and had a turn once the novelty of it wore of for the other kids, with Amanda's help.

This picture cracks me up! Because mom was making homemade noodles and I went to take a picture and Hannie quickly acted like she was helping her and mom, at this exact moment, was saying, in a very appauld voice 'Don't even THINK about taking credit for my noodles!'.

In a house with 13 kids, it pretty much a given that someone is going to get hurt at some point. Grant busted his lip pretty good, and luckily for him, Grampy was a good nurse and took good care of him!

These cute girls (although filthy from playing in rocks all afternoon) are best of friends.

And Hannie is equally cute!

And these ruffians are also best buds. They spent quite a bit of time making rubberband bracelets and necklaces.

But these two? They take the cake. I mean, really! They're the CUTEST friends. So sweet and funny and just absolutely adorable together!

I mean, really. See!

Such bosom buddies. Makes my mother heart so happy!!

Bennett and Grant played great together this time as well. Unfortunately this was the only picture I got of Bennett. And he looks hypnotized by Grant's sucker, so sorry about that.

Grampy bought these cook hydraulic machines that the kids built one day. Landon felt a bit like an evil scientist working on his (or maybe he just looked like one...).

And then the day after Thanksgiving we went to a field and shot off the rockets (sticking with the tradition that we've adopted from Casey's family). It was a BEAUTIFUL day for it and it was a 'blast' (pardon the pun) like always!

See! Cutest best buds!

The kids always enjoy pushing the button to blast off the rocket. Grant and Miles seemed the most excited about it this year.

Addie, Bennett, and Carly played mostly on the little play ground that was close by. Everyone else tries their darndest to catch the rocket when it's coming down, which is a lot harder than it seems! Those suckers go HIGH and it's pretty difficult to determine exactly where it will be coming down, and then get there in time!

Up until this year, Dad was the only one who has ever caught a rocket out of the air. But this year Brad was SUPER excited to add his name to the very short list. I WISH I had the camera ready when he first caught it. His excitement was priceless!

Ella and Maya, making sure the rockets were ready for launch. (and a funny/sad note: when we headed out to shoot the rockets, we all loaded up in 5 cars. Jessica was napping at home and wasn't going to come along. We all piled in the cars, got to the field, and started in on the fun. About 20 minutes later, Jessica pulled up with Maya, who was VERY sad, because she had been left at home, and we hadn't even realized it! Luckily Jessica saved the day!)

The Three Amigos!

And Ender is just hilarious!!

Grant and Miles were pretty sad that the didn't catch any rockets. They didn't even care if they caught them out of the air, they just wanted to be able to bring it back. So there may have been a time or two where, when a rocket was shot off, we'd throw another one in front of the little boys so they could get that one. Whether it was staged or not, they were thrilled with the results!

And I had to include this picture of James photo bombing this picture of Ella. Such a silly, silly Monkey (that's what all the kids call James for some reason. I think it's because they used to call him Unkie (for uncle) James. But somehow it morphed to Monkey).

It was a great holiday and we were SO sad to see it end!!