Thanksgiving Week

We had a very fun, albeit busy, Thanksgiving weekend.  The Magids hosted Thanksgiving this year, so we left Wednesday afternoon for Indy.  The long weekend got off to a great start with a wonderful dinner at the Country Club.  As Julie's picture accurately portrays, much wine was consumed and everyone had a good time.  

Little Beanie Boo getting some loving from her aunts.  

This is a picture of just MOST of the cousins who were in Indy for Thanksgiving.  Needless to say, they all had a blast playing together.

 I didn't get an actual picture of the dinner, it was delicious, or the Turkey Bowl, there was much smack talk and fun had, but I did manage to capture a picture of the kids in the house next door watching a movie.  Almost all of the cousins slept together on the floor in this room each night.  And before sleep came, much silliness commenced.  Finn joined in for the silliness, but preferred the coziness of his parents bed to actually sleep.  The girls, of course, slept in their pods like little angels.

On Friday after a trip to the Indy Children's Museum to tire the kids out, the Frost family followed us to Chicago for some more fun.  Saturday we all went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  Here's Finn driving the John Deere.

And Gillian and Finn posing as an engineer and fireman, respectively.

After the Museum, the older kids, Vicki, Mike and I went to see the Muppets.  It was very cute.  Then Sunday, the Frosts had to head home.  So we decided Thanksgiving was officially over and it was time to move on to Christmas.  We put out our Christmas Village, nativity scene, advent wreath and, most importantly, we put up our tree!  The kids had fun helping decorate before they went to bed.  Well...of the three Finn did most of the decorating.

Sabine was content just looking cute.

While Louly was happiest showing off her awesome belly!

My cuties!

The finished product.

And last, but not least, the elf on the shelf, who was later named Gorky, made his first appearance at the Manning/Kline house the next morning.  Finding Gorky every morning after he returned from his nightly visit to the North Pole proved to be loads of fun for Finn!