Thanksgiving 2013

I feel like I blinked and Thanksgiving was over! Can hardly believe we've already started the countdown to Christmas - only 21 days away (holy moly- more to say on that later!) We spent a nice Thanksgiving here in Camarillo with Mom and Dad Jenkins. Since I grew up spending every Thanksgiving with 50+ cousins, I always feel like the day should be spent with more than just our kids running around. So when I heard about some good friends of ours that didn't have family around and would be eating alone, I asked mom how she felt about 6 more at our table. Spencer's mom is always up for a party and was totally cool with it. I was glad for the extra company that helped make our dinner feel more like Thanksgiving, instead of just a much bigger Sunday meal. 

Really wanted to get a nice table shot, but I always end up taking fewer pictures than I'd planned on. Glad I got the few that I did, even if they're not the greatest quality.

The kid table:

Notice the little turkeys - here's a close up:

They were much harder to make than they look. Thankfully Spencer was a good sport and helped me create 13 of them!

It was fun having the Nelson family join us. It's always nice when your kids line right up in age (except that we don't have an 8 year old)!

We both have a six year old named Madilyn - so we have to distinguish by middle names which are also similar: Madi Kaye and Maddi Mae!

We both have 4 year olds - Ella (on left), Elle (on right). These two love playing together in their weekly joy school group!

Then we've got the littles just two months apart - Macee and Calvin.

I loved how Cal kept running around calling, "Macee! Macee!"

As crazy as it was to have the 7 kids running around, I loved that my kids had friends to play with on Thanksgiving.  HUGE thanks to mom and dad for hosting the party! I felt really bad that we had to leave right after pie, but little kids had bedtimes that couldn't be pushed any later.

I have so much to be grateful for - more than I have the time to name right now, so I'll just finish with a final picture of our thankful tree that we've had fun adding to throughout the month.  I think we'll leave it up and keep adding leaves throughout December. Sure thankful for these cute kids of mine that posed themselves at my request for a picture! Then they went right back to screaming and bugging each other! Oh the joys! :)