Giving Thanks

Thank goodness for Thanksgiving! We love Thanksgiving in our family, especially now that we are back in Texas to celebrate. We were spoiled with two Thanksgivings......
Keep in mind I wish I would have gotten more pictures of everyone but it was just so busy, time got away from me and the opportunity to catch shots :)

First the Carver Clan=>
Produced by my sister Carrie.
She hosted this years thanksgiving. It was her, Ryan and their 4 kids, mom, dad, Caity, our fam-Nathan, Nikki, Ethan, Shelby & Linky, my bro Chris, Em and their 3 girls and then of course the missionaries from Carrie's ward. It was a FULL HOUSE!!!!!!!!! But so much fun! That's the only way to go on holidays right? The crazier the better!




Here we are to start off......everyone smiling!
The sisters, of course.....



Nana & Papa and their 10 of 11 grandchildren. (Minus little Jackson James)
Here's me and my Shelby, ready to eat!

Nathan & Linky boy




The grand-kids, catching up.

The little kids table ..........

and the big kids table.
Heavy discussion?



Cousins &

Aunts having fun :)


Uncle Chris soothing Ms. Shelby, she got a toy stolen from her :*(


Playing games
Carv, K & E playing games of their own.




We ate good food, had good laughs, played great games and of course got a little football game time in. Thanks to Carrie for putting everything together. The food was great ! Can't wait til' next year!


Now over to the Abrahams for more good times!

(Again I wish I could have gotten more pictures. )

After the celebration with the Carvers we were able to meet Grandma & Grandpa Abraham over at The Gaylord Hotel. Wow what a place. The decorations were incredible. It was like a whole town inside the Hotel. There were some many decorations and themes, what a wonderful experience. Check it out....

http://www.gaylordhotels.com/


So then on the Saturday after Thanksgiving we went out to Azle to have the actual Abraham Thanksgiving feast. Firsts the boys were busy making a new table for Jared & Jamie. The girls were in charge of gathering the supplies.

Here we are loading the wood....







And here are our boys hard at work :)






with a little assistance from E-tom



And the finished product, beautiful, with decorations!



Here are some familiar faces enjoying the gathering.







Here are some other fun pictures I found of the cousins playing a few days earlier I wanted to post. Ms. Shelby playing peek-a-boo


Driving cars...



Behind bars

Chillin




And finally some relaxation.

I didn't get any shots of the fun crafts Jamie and I did with the kids but you can check her blog to see =>


It was a wonderful holiday celebration. It's always crazy and fun when holidays come up to have both families to celebrate with. We are so lucky we are so close to both. We had so much fun, thanks to everyone!

My cowboy turns 29 !

Part 1 Nathan Birthday...

So I'm never good at getting Nathan presents for his birthday. He is always so nice saying "whatever I get him is good" but I of course don't want to get him just anything. SOOO this year I demanded help. I told him he had to help me pick something out. Luckily for me ( and I think him ) he agreed. So months ago for his graduation present I got him a welder. (Once again with his assistance ;) So for his b-day present he said he wanted to make/weld himself a smoker


So first he needed some barrels
Here's his project in the making.....




Here's the finished project and our hard worker. I don't know all the details of the project.
As part of his present we gave him some time to work on it and since we don't have a garage..... his brother let him borrow his. So we let him spend the day out there with no disturbances. I kept the little kids at home and he went out to Azle for some hard work. Of course Ethan was happy to tag a long to see his cousins.





Part II

Here's my cowboy- turning 29! Which he thinks is old, ha ha but I told him see what he thinks in 10-to 15 years. I bet he'll miss these days.





Nathan decided for this year's birthday he wanted to go Texan style. Of course we all know how much Nathan loves Texas ;) So we went to TEXAS ROADHOUSE. Accompanied by Mom & Dad Abe, Jared & Jamie and Nathan's best friend Steven & Brittany. Thanks for coming out y'all- to help us celebrate.

Opening presents..........really excited, obviously ;)
Happy to have his first Texas Rangers shirt-represent!
Back to mom and dad's for some brownies (Nathan's favorite) and ice cream-blue bell, also his favorite!
I still made him blow out candles. The kids loved it!

Even Link got some yummy dessert
Yum, yum, yum
Off to some laughs. Luckily we got Grandma & Grandpa to sit for us which the kids loved of course.



We went to a comedy show with Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, Nathan's favorite. It was SOOOO funny. Of course there were some crude jokes here and there, unfortunately, BUT the other stuff we loved. We were both dying laughing.





We tried to get some pics-obviously not very good seating. We just needed to hear them and that was good enough. Plus even those seats were pretty pricey. It was so worth it though. We counted it as one of his presents. He is a tough guy to buy for. Even after being married almost 7 years I still struggle buying gifts. I was so happy he was able to do something he really liked :)
Here we are in our bleacher seats.

What a great night. What a great party.
Happy Birthday to an incredible father & husband. I love you.