Happy Thanksgiving!

Our Thanksgiving could not have started any better!

When my brother and sister in law walked in holding my nephew Finn, we were all so excited to see them that it took us a few seconds to notice his shirt.  Then we all erupted in squeals and hugs!  We we are all so excited to have a new member of the family coming this June!

My adorable nephew Finn . . .

This little guy will be getting a new little brother or sister on or near his second birthday.  Kate's due date is June 14th (Finn's Birthday).

Here we all are checking out Finn's shirt and congratulating the soon to be family of four!

Kate, Kevin and Finn

Will Finn have a little brother or sister? 

I can't wait to find out!

My niece Annie and my sister in law Francine.

So cute!

Lucy and I, just after we found out that Lucy is getting a new cousin,

she was telling me how hard it is going to be to wait, she is very excited!

I LOVE Thanksgiving!

In fact it is my favorite holiday!  All of you Christmas lovers out there will probably never understand me, but to me Thanksgiving has all of the family fun, just being together, good food, coziness etc. of Christmas without all of the focus on gift buying.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting and giving gifts too, but I love the "family" part the most :).

Maybe another reason that I love Thanksgiving so much is that I don't have to do much. My Mom takes the brunt of all of the hard work every year.  Namely, cooking the turkey and pretty much everything else.  We are all assigned side dishes, but she definitely does the most.

THANK YOU MOM!

Oh and she sets a beautiful table too!

Thanksgiving has been reserved for the Murray side of the family for the past few years (I am hoping that it stays this way as our tradition).  That means that both of my brothers come down from Seattle with their kids, and we all spend the long weekend together!  This leaves my brothers free to spend Christmas with my sister in laws families.  I am always so thankful that we all get to be together!  We usually spend the day eating, watching football, playing games and talking.

The cousins always have a BLAST together!

We also try to help my mom in the kitchen.  Pancho is usually a better helper than me.  I am just lost when it comes to cooking.  Kate, Francine and I were talking about how my Mom has been enabling us.  None of us has ever had to cook a turkey.  I am 40 years old and I would not  know what to do!  I'm not complaining though.  Mom makes the best Thanksgiving Dinner ever, we end up eating the leftovers for the whole weekend.

The kids played in the hot tub quite a bit.  The boys were outside playing football quite a bit too.  My nephew Will just loves playing sports with his big cousins.

My Dad got us all lined up for some family pictures.

 . . . and here we all are, the whole gang!

My Aunt, Uncle and cousins from Salem came down and had some yummy Turkey with us too, it was a full house.  They were the ones that got forced to photograph all of us with every one of our cameras.  They were very good sports :).

We always go around the table and everyone says what they are Thankful for, I have so many things!  I have been very blessed and I thank God every day for all I have been given.

Believe it or not, we actually had about half of the people that we usually have for Thanksgiving this year.  Sadly, our Portland relatives couldn't make it this year.  The good news was that the kids finally got to sit at the big table with all of the adults.  Annie and Lucy were very happy to be included.

All in all it was such a fun four day weekend with my family, we always have such a great time together!  I am so sad to see it over. I guess that I will have to wait another year for my favorite holiday :).  Christmas isn't so bad though, especially since I got 90% of my shopping done on Black Friday.  More to come on that  in my next post . . .