The Rest of Thanksgiving Weekend — With the Kids Home

We thought at first that only Grace was coming home for Thanksgiving. It was going to be a small little intimate gathering. But then Carson was able to get work off and those two decided to come, and shortly Max & Abby followed suit.

And we were not mad about that gathering 🙂

We stuffed those few days quite full of some pretty good stuff I have to say.

First Grace, Abby and Murph arrived:

Thanksgiving Prep

They helped us with some Thanksgiving prep…

Including things like planting flowers in the front and back yard:

These huge agaves got too big and needed to be replaced…

We caught up with Survivor (which is very important in time for Thanksgiving in case you didn’t know…:)

Lucy liked to join in any time Grace was talking to Isaac. And the pic on the right is from Abby’s instagram but I agree with her, those are two perfect girls!

Cleaned out (and filled up) the pool.

My brother-in-law painted the Thankful board (even though these pesky thankfuls from last year refused to get covered, they must have been really strong things people were thankful for!), and Grace wrote out the “I am Thankful” part:

We kept Murph clean (ha) and she helped me plant our front flowers:

And last but certainly not least, LUCY **ASKED** TO GO DRESS SHOPPING. (She’s going to Winter Formal-so much more on that soon- and needed a dress). But it was amazing because this girl does NOT ask to go shopping. She actually gets frustrated when I try to figure out new clothes for her.

So this was a big deal. Big enough that all girls came along, including Elle who hadn’t arrived yet.

(Well, we were missing Claire of course!)

She actually found that dress all by herself and although it needs altering (and I hope it gets done by tomorrow!!), our jaws were all dropped at this business.

More about that with Winter Formal news next week, but it was a big deal with these visitors!

Grace’s best friend from when we lived in China was in town with her boyfriend and stopped by for a visit. It was SO GOOD to see them!

Had Survivor Night with cousins who were in town (new episode…have I mentioned we’re kind of Survivor junkies around here?)

Thanksgiving Stuff

Then at 1:00am on Thanksgiving Eve Elle and Carson arrived.

…and it was on to the Turkey Trot:

…and Thanksgiving in quick succession.

Then it was Dave’s birthday, filled with lots of good stuff (see that post for more details including poker night…pic below).

And THEN we had one more day with everyone.

So, we put it to work.

A bridal shower for Dave’s cousin’s son’s fiance first:

Claire played volleyball with all those girls, including the bride-to-be and we sure love them!

Elle was a special helper to Lucy on her college essays:

There is so much wrapped up into this, but I’ll just say for now that it was very sweet business in there.

The Lake

Then we took a little trip to the lake.

The lake? you might ask? In November??

But yes, the lake is brilliant in the Fall with no other boats around!

Sure, a tad bit chilly, but so worth it to be out in all that beauty.

Suns Game

Our last stop that day was that we got lucky enough to go to the Suns game (Lu and Murph opted out of this one).

And we missed them but OH! We had fun!

For the first half Dave and I got Grace all to ourselves:

And these couples sat by each other:

Then we switched and had girls together:

And boys:

I’m pretty sure the girls had more fun.

Ha! Yep, we made it on the jumbo-tron.

Down to just Max, Abby and Murph

Elle, Carson and Grace all had to take off early on Sunday morning and we got Max, Abby and Murph for another day.

We went to church with our fav. girl:

It felt so good to see so many of Claire’s friends at a homecoming since we were sure MISSING that girl that weekend!

We took a family walk under pink-clouded skies:

“Coach and Nini” (Dave and I) got to babysit Murphy for a little tad of a bit:

(Oh we also put up the Christmas tree back there…)

…and we got to have Abby for a few minutes on the morning of her birthday before they took off.

Phew!

It was quite a weekend.

These guys (plus Claire & Murphy) hold my whole heart.

…and it was spilling over with love that we got to all be together for those precious (and whirlwind) few days. Love them forever.