Santa Pictures + Spaghetti Factory tradition!!

 Visiting Santa... I need to get my picture scanned in... the one with just my kids. They were in a funny mood. They were all thrilled to be there, walked right up to Santa and chatted with him, and even all looked at the camera. But once it was time to take the picture, they stiffened up and wouldn't relax enough to smile. Oh, well. It's a perfect "Santa picture"!

 I love all the cousins paired up in the group photo. (We missed Miles, Nico & Alex... they went to visit with other family today.)

 Mom & Billy

 Chloe & Maddie

 Grandma gave all the kids coins to put down the "wishing well"

 Jackson

Sammy!

Happy Thanksgiving + Christmas Drawing Exchange!!

Chloe, Jackson, Maddie, Lucy, Miles, Grandma, Nico, Kate, Alex, Sam - after another one of Grandma's "What's in the bag?" games

Then, we did our Cousins (and unmarried uncles) Christmas Drawing exchange... so fun to watch the kids get so excited about giving and receiving!

Lucy & Maddie

Christian and Kate

Christian, Josh, Chloe, Kate, Heather

Heather, Chloe, Jackson

Jackson & Miles

Christian & Nico

Josh & Benjamin

Kate & Benjamin

Daddy & Lucy

Maddie... with her giant turkey drumstick!

THANKSGIVING feast!!!

All the girls in the kitchen... it was so much fun being together and being silly and listening to Christmas music in the background and working together to get our delicious meal complete and ready to be enjoyed by all of our families. And it was delicious, too!

Parker and Mike graciously helped out with dishes afterward... great guys!

We celebrated Grandpa's birthday (Nov. 7) and Heather's birthday (Nov. 23), with singing and candles on the cake and everything.

Then, Tiffany thought it would be fun to squirt whipping cream into the kids' mouths. They agreed!

Already in that mode, Chloe started to taste her cake... really?

back for more...

And Lucy...

(I'm not sure who took these last few pictures, but they were too cute not to post.) Sammy

Maddie

Christian

Miles

Chloe

These are totally out of order and I'm too tired to fix them. Maybe someday. You get the idea.