The holiday is over!

I SURVIVED! I decided on to do much preparation for Thanksgiving dinner until my "guests" got here so they could help out. I figured even if we didn't eat until 6 p.m. it was better than being a crab and exhausted all day. When they showed up my Dad started helping me right away. Him and I put the whole Thanksgiving dinner together within two hours and everyone was smackin their lips. There were several comments about the amount of food there was because I seem to ALWAYS over do it when I cook a meal. Thayne thinks it's a funny idiosyncrasy I have. For example, I made a jello salad and used 10 boxes of jello plus 4 cans of fruit. I wanted to make sure we had enough....well....my dad suggested we invite the nieghbors on the block to eat it with us. I think they should just be thankful there was enough for seconds =). By the end of the day I was exhausted but I felt good about what "we" had accomplished together. My father sure was a life saver!
The kids had so much fun with their cousins and it was nice not to have to check on them every ten minutes. My older nephews kept a good eye on them and let me know when things were getting out of hand. They all loved the new house and said so many times. It felt nice to be able to host that many people and still felt like there was a space in the house you could go if you need a few minutes to yourself and it wasn't the bathroom!
Jaed turned in to some strip-tease boy for most of the time my family was here. I started to worry about him a bit. He thought it was so funny to take his clothes off and run around the house laughing and saying, "Look at my bum crack!". I was pretty embarrassed and smacked his bum a couple of times but it didn't stop him. Now our little Indi is smacking our bums saying, "bum crack, mommy". I know that I"ll have to have a parent-teacher conference with Jaed's teacher because he'll be mooning his class and yelling, "LOOK AT MY BUM CRACK!". I guess humiliation comes with being a parent.
Josie, Indi and their two twin (four year old) cousins played "princess" most of the time they were here. Everytime you turned around they were in a new princess dress. Although the constant dress changing is very typical for Indi. She loves to put a new dress on more than she poops her diaper and she does that at least 4-5 times a day.
My dad stayed with us for several days after my brother and his clan left. It was nice to visit with him and see him get to know my kids again. They all wanted to be by his side constantly which thrilled me. It was sad to see him go because we don't know when we'll see him again. I hope to get to Utah for the summer but without a summer job for Thayne and don't think that will be possible. We'll see what happens, I guess.
I really do miss my family. More now then I have since I moved here. I think it's because I've always been around family when I had my other children and it feels very scary to have a child without that support right at my fingertips. I never had to worry about who would take care of my kids so that Thayne could stay in the hospital with me, or if my kids were driving them crazy because they loved my kids even with their naughtiness. I try not to think about it too much because it stresses me out so we'll see how things unfold as they come our way.

One holiday down and one to go!! I might have been a little harsh to say that I would NEVER host again but it will be a very long time before I offer.

(My Dad, my brother's six kids, and my kids)