Life As We Know It: Thanksgiving Festivities

We had a busy but very fun week celebrating Thanksgiving with our family. I worked Wednesday night and woke up around lunchtime Thanksgiving day to get to work on our feast! We had my parents over for dinner and really enjoyed our own little stab at cooking for Thanksgiving and each others' company as well! Carter was so excited to taste some new things and says his favorites from the day were turkey and chocolate pie. Hudson was a vacuum cleaner and ate anything we put in front of him and in typical Cooper fashion, dinosaur chicken and ketchup were on his menu.

Carter was playing Thanksgiving photographer and was cracking us up in the process!

Hudson was a sleepyhead and Pop had to wake him up to come join in on the fun.

Friday morning we went to the farmer's market to get our Christmas tree. The boys were beyond thrilled with the idea of decorating so early and although I was hesitant to jump on the bandwagon, I'm very thankful in hindsight that we are now decorated and ready! Jamey did his usual job of stringing lights on the tree while I decorated the inside and outside with all of our other decorations, with a great deal of help from the older two of course! Once the lights were on it was time to decorate! Carter was excited but Cooper was about to burst he was so happy to have such a big job. Every ornament he would pick up, he'd say, "Wow Mommy! This is the most beautiful ornament I've ever seen! Santa is gonna think we have the most beautiful tree in the whole world!" I wish I would've grabbed the camera to get a few of the tree after Carter and Cooper's decorating but I was too busy moving the ornaments to space them out! They had easily put 3/4 of our ornaments front and center within their own reach but they were so proud of themselves that I couldn't bring myself to stop them. All was well until I was reaching underneath the tree to grab an ornament that had fallen and the entire tree, decorated and all, came crashing down on top of me! Thankfully Jamey came to my rescue quickly and we're hopeful for a vertical tree for the rest of December!

Once we finished decorating we went outside to rake our yard and were greeted by my parents and Brian and Sarah, who had just gotten into town. The boys adore all 4 of them so it was lovely for me to have a little break from refereeing and entertaining and pacifying!

We went to dinner at my parents Friday night and were commenting about how well Hudson was eating...until we realized he was feeding George all of his food!

Our annual Thanksgiving photo shoot in an attempt at a Christmas card picture - thanks Sarah!

A little cornhole practice at Nunu and Pop's, where we had Thanksgiving on Saturday. My mom's two brothers and their wives both came along with my dad's brother, his wife, my cousin with his three daughters, his girlfriend and her 2 daughters, and Ashley and Andrew. We definitely had a crowd but had a great time being with everyone and my mom was a great hostess.

A little front yard football action.

Strategizing

The aftermath of Carter tackling Cooper and taking the ball away after NOT tackling was emphasized by Brian and Jamey!

Lunchtime!

Carter and the girls all decided to climb this enormous holly tree in the yard and were all so proud of themselves. Thankfully no one was pricked in the process!