Thanksgiving...A Week Post-Date

I'm finally getting around to posting about Thanksgiving! We had a wonderful time. Paul had work off from Wednesday through Friday, so we drove up to Indianapolis on Wednesday morning to spend a few days with Paul's cousins and Grandma. It was a four hour drive, which turned out to be perfect. Benjamin was able to entertain himself almost the entire time, and Peter slept with one break to eat. It was great to get out of St. Louis for a few days and just take a break from normal life. Paul's cousin Adrea and her husband Josh were awesome and made their first Thanksgiving dinner for a group of eight, plus two toddlers. We provided our measly contribution by making the rolls and some pumpkin bread. Grandma was appalled that we threw out the neck and giblets...apparently they're supposed to be used in the gravy. But as far as I was concerned, everything tasted great! Thanks again, everyone!

Those are the satisfied faces of those who stuck around after the meal for a fun game. We all wrote one thing we were grateful for, and Grandma read them all aloud for us to guess. I was pretty proud of the fact that I stumped everyone with "gas heat." They all thought it was Josh, who had actually written "fossil fuels." Everyone guessed Paul's right away though. His was "proximity."

Paul and me.

Paul's other cousin Maddy and her husband Seth decorated the table and came up with the game. Here's Seth making butter after salt was accidentally used in place of sugar in the whipping cream.

Maddy is an awesome photographer and took a bunch of pictures of Henry and Benjamin playing together. Henry is just two months younger than Benjamin, so they had a great time together when they weren't grappling over a toy or knocking each other down. I'm pretty sure they're both much more affable to lady friends. :)

Henry was so sweet to Peter. He even let him hang out in his beloved chair during our stay! Here's Benjamin pretending to fawn over his baby brother like Henry. Since we've been home of course, it's been a different story. Good thing we can use Santa as a discipline tactic now! I wish I could say that it works all the time, but I'm usually giving Benjamin "time outs" every 15 minutes or so towards the end of the day, when he's had just about enough of me nursing and holding Peter.

So anyways, I'm thankful for all of you! We really do feel blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. Happy December, or "kimmih-time" as Benjamin would put it.