Thankful

Well, there went the rest of November with nary a post from me.  We spent a lovely Thanksgiving at my in-law's in Ohio as we do every year. Even despite her recent knee replacement surgery, my MIL worked her tail off and treated us to an amazing feast, as she always does. I also got to meet my new precious nephew (6 weeks old!) and spend some quality family time with J's side of the family. The boys and L were reunited with their cousin, S, and it is always such a blessing to see them pick up right where they left off and enjoy each other. S has those boys wrapped around her little finger. She had them playing ice cream shop and "family" in no time flat. C even sacrificed his football watching time to play along (trust me, that's big). If only we all lived closer. And if all that weren't enough, J arranged for his parents to watch the kids while we jaunted off to Cleveland for an overnight stay at the Ritz on Friday = Heaven. Have I mentioned how thankful I am for my amazing husband? I seriously don't know what I'd do without him. He really 'gets' the demands of being a SAHM and is always doing things - big and small - to make sure I get some down time.

Here are some of the special family Thanksgiving 2011 memories my FIL captured (and well, we forgot our camera at home ;-)).

Pop pop is a bird lover (I'm embarrassed to even mention how many very large bags of bird seed that man has stored in his basement. Suffice it to say that if a major disaster ever happens, we can hunker down with the in laws in Ohio and subsist on bird seed for quite a long while) and has a bunch of bird feeders of all different types outside the kitchen window. L absolutely delighted in sitting up on the kitchen counter for long stretches of time watching all of the birds flit back and forth between the trees and feeders. After a while, she was even getting some of the bird names correct. Needless to say, pop pop was delighted in his prodigy.

This was B's favorite place to hunker down - beside pop pop's excellently prepared fire. The boys pointed out several times that pop pop has the upper hand on daddy when it comes to building fires. Again, pop pop was delighted.

L was fascinated by the exercises mom mom had to do each day for her knee and kept following her into the bedroom and snuggling herself right next to her on the bed to do leg lifts with her. It was quite adorable. Wished we had captured it on video!

No explanation really needed for this next one. Silly kids eating breakfast. Notice little sister copying big brother with the silly face.

Welcome to the ice cream shop (also known as mom mom and pop pop's bedroom) where all family members were required to buy many, many, many, many, many, many, many (you get the picture?) scoops of ice cream for hours on end. But notice that they at least provided the money for purchase (not sure who came up with that idea??  Certainly not my capitalistic, enterprising boys? Must have been that socialist, free love cousin of theirs...).

How cute is this face? Welcome to our zany family, little one!

And last, but certainly not least, a few snaps of our family championship ping pong tournament. Unfortunately, I was handily eliminated in the first round by my eldest son who is freakishly good at ping pong.
Cousin S played L (with a little help from dad) in the first round. S won out, despite L's on top of the table advantage.

Uncle P and (great) Uncle Joe played a very serious round of hip to mouth ping pong....

Mom mom played her own special version of ping pong. Good thing she was only up against her 5-year old granddaughter. Unfortunately for mom mom, granddaughter won out.

B made it to round 2, but was eliminated by big brother...

Uncle P ultimately beat out C in the final round.  Darn you, Uncle P! But you should have seen some of the great volleys these two had. I tell ya, C is going to be the next U.S. Olympic ping pong (or is the proper term table tennis?) champ.

All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving. I am blessed and so very thankful for my family.