Family Thanksgiving Week

This year we hosted the "Cousins Thanksgiving", which included our family, my brother's family, and my cousin Stephanie's family.  (It typically includes my cousin Daniel's family as well, but they were unable to make it this year.)  The fun started the Sunday before Thanksgiving when Stephanie, Grant, and their daughter Addison came to town.  Addison and Alli are about 10 months apart, so they had a lot of fun together.  They painted, played games, got every toy imaginable out on Alli's floor (daily), and even went "jeeping" with the dads.  On Wednesday they checked into a hotel and we had a quick family switch as my brother and his family arrived to stay at our house.

The cousins had a great time playing with each other, the adults had a great time watching the kids and catching up.

We watched a lot of things in our house break:  the refrigerator (had the repair guy out twice!), the toilet (that was quite a mess cleaning up an inch of water!), and the hot tub heater.  Glad we don't host for another 4 years!


Thanksgiving day was a full day, starting with Alli and I walking in the Thanksgiving Day parade with her dance class.

We then rushed home to get the turkey started.  The little girls helped me prepare the pumpkin pie!  And the men were ordered out of the kitchen, but eventually were let into the kitchen to help prepare the feast, but were given girl names while in the kitchen area.  :)  Andy=Angelina.  Grant=Grace.  Kim=Kim.  hmmm...

The feast:

The Amstutz/Guerrette cousins:

The Perkins:

The adults: