A little Thanksgiving fun

Warning: Long post with lots of pictures that are probably just for me. :)

I always seem to hit the Thanksgiving traffic whether I leave on Wednesday or Thursday, so this year I decided to leave for my parents' house on Tuesday--especially since both kids were off of school beginning on Wednesday. Unfortunately, Samuel had to work 2 shifts on Thankgiving and 2 more on Friday, so he stayed home. I'm glad the kitties were here to keep him company--and I brought back lots of turkey dinner with all the sides for him.

Before leaving town, I met up with some friends to have lunch with Lyndsey since she was in town for the holiday. The menu of choice? In-N-Out, of course.

Helene enjoyed the fries

Just kidding, I only let her play with the fry tray.

As much as I love my kids, can I just say how nice it was to just have Helene at lunch instead of trying to wrangle all 3 kids, in addition to chatting and eating. So nice and easy.

After lunch Helene napped at home while I started packing. Then it was off to pick up Hannah and Sammy from school. My goal was to be on the road no later than 4:00pm. Of course, I ended up leaving at 5:20 and hitting all the traffic. It took me 1 hour to go from my house to Irwindale. No joke.

I got to my parents' house a little after 8:00pm. Yep, 3 hours. Fun times. Actually, the older kids were fine because they had the DVD players in the back, but Helene was miserable. I finally pulled over to feed her, but it didn't really help and she cried/screamed for the 90 minutes or so. I was so happy to get her out of the van!

Wednesday was full of Thanksgiving prep and some fun for the kids. We ate lunch and then headed over to Chuck E Cheese's to play games for a bit.

Hannah liked the game with the bees and the honey jar

Sammy played lots and lots of basketball.
He is really quite good at it.

Whoo hoo!

Air hockey time!

Even Helene took a ride on the carousel

And Hannah rode every single ride that they had there

Helene took a break to hang out with Grandpa

Here are the only pictures I took on Thanksgiving--in my defense, there was a lot going on with all the kids running around and trying to help out with dinner.

This is the kids' table with almost all the grandkids (the babies were at the adult table), only 4 of the 13 grandkids couldn't be there.

Yep, napkins on their heads.

Helene got to sit at the adult table with me.
She kept trying to sneak food off of Larry's plate.

"Who me?"

And she was obsessed with her reflection in the water pitcher.

We headed home on Friday and had absolutely no traffic. YAY! As fun as it was to see all the family, it's always so nice to get home to your own bed and routine.

And it was just in time too as Sammy came down with the stomach flu this evening. He's been throwing up for the past 6 hours. Poor guy. I'm just glad we're home--it's so hard to be sick when you're not at your own house, especially when you're only 5.

Hope he's over it soon and the rest of us don't catch it!