Turkey Day

We have so much to be grateful for this year, namely all of the little turkeys in our life.  We were lucky to be able to drive down to Mop and Pop's house in Orange County for a Raley Thanksgiving with -- count 'em - seven grandkids!  The number of kids underfoot for Thanksgiving weekend was, under the best of circumstances, equal to the number of adults.  Yikes! 

The kids table has literally pushed the adult table to the side in Mop's and Pop's dining room.  The only kid not present in this picture is baby Molly, quietly avoiding this chaos.     

Notably present in this picture?  Tessa and Annie made their kid table debut, and did shockingly well sans high chairs!

One more kid shot --- again, Molly wisely avoided this scene:

The babies made themselves comfortable quickly on this trip.  By the second night, they had perfected their little performance on the fireplace hearth.  This included "singing" their favorite storytime song, complete with all of the hand motions, and climbing onto and off of the hearth about a hundred times.  Here they are plotting their next act:

Meanwhile, the big kids kept themselves busy with craft projects and the usual mayhem.

And, while it's fun to hang with your cousins, sometimes enough is enough...at least for Bridget, who continues to have a love-hate relationship with Clara.

 

We said our goodbyes a full 11 hours before we reached home!!!  Yes, 11 hours.  Not nearly enough of that drive included sleeping kids.  Road trips continue to stress us me out.  I'll just choose to remember this moment from the trip:

and not the 127 times where this happened:

I settled into my seat, turned on my Kindle, and read one sentence, at which point someone needed something, poked someone, dropped something, or needed to go pee.  All of these requests involved me performing gymnastics to get to the back of the van, and then reversing the stunt to get back in my seat...just in time to read one more sentence in my Kindle, and then repeat the process over and over again.

We're realizing how lucky we are that kids needing to pee on a road trip is our biggest problem. We have a lot to be thankful for this year, and had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Thanks Mop and Pop!!