Arizona Thanksgiving

Yes, that picture was taken last week -- the end of November! Dustin's whole family (less Casey and Sarah -- we missed you) came out for a week to celebrate Thanksgiving and it was so stinking fun. We rented a house so that we could all stay together. It came with a heated pool, but the trade off was that it was all way in Avondale. If you're not from around here, it's reeeaaaaaalllly far away from our house, plus it's in the West Valley and we're snobs out here in the East Valley. The pool was totally worth it though because the kids went swimming at least 3 times a day. Easy entertainment.

So what, did the 17 of us do for 8 days. Everything. We ate too much, stayed up too late, made waaaay too many trips to the store, went to the park, made crafts, had a gift exchange, ate too much again -- mainly cookies and ice cream this time, got manicures and pedicures, swam a lot, went to Build-A-Bear on Black Friday (call us crazy), played the best board games -- Chris always has these really clever, yet obscure games to play. So stinking fun. Ellie was ecstatic to have her only girl cousin here for a week long sleepover. Nate had a little bit of a harder time sharing his toys with Wyatt, but he'll grow out of it as he gets older I'm sure. One thing they could agree on was their love of the movie Cars, their thumbs, and their blankies. They're so stinking cute!

As usual, Jennifer had to show us all up in the gift exchange by getting us all the cutest handmade gifts. She's the Sister-in-Law who gave us all those matching purses one Christmas (the brown one with the dots that everyone loves). This year it was these stinking cute aprons! I don't know if I'll ever use it for fear of ruining it. Ellie's matches mine, so you'll just have to imagine how cute mine is. I won't be posting any pictures of myself :)

And one last picture of Nate loving the Gingerbread house. He mainly loved the candy and the frosting. I ran upstairs to get Ellie ready for bed and came back downstairs to find him on the table covered in frosting and the gingerbread house all over the place. That was fun to clean up :)

I think the older nephews had a good time too. We hardly saw them between the pool, their gamecube, the pool table and soccer in the garage. It was just fun to be together. Plus I got all my Christmas cards addressed (just have to write the letter now) and I read an entire book. I love vacation!