Giving Thanks for Family!

I know I'm a little late at posting about our Thanksgiving weekend, but it was so great I have to tell you all about it. 

 First, I have to tell you that once this semester when we went to visit Austin at college we met 3 or 4 friends of his from Japan.  Afterwards I inquired about what they would be doing for Thanksgiving and told Austin he could invite them to spend it with us and experience an American Thanksgiving.  Well Austin eventually told us he had invited 6 Japanese friends!!!  So the night before Thanksgiving I prepared dinner for 6 Japanese kids, the 8 people in my family and my niece and her boyfriend.  Yeah that's 16 people!  Then we made room assignments for our 6 guest!  The next morning we took them to our church Turkey Bowl. 

 It was cold but fun! 

 (I took the pleasure to point out my kids!)

My sister and I actually take turns hosting Thanksgiving dinner each year, and this year it happened to be my sister's year.  We had to set up three long tables to get us all in.  8 from my family, 6 Japanese guest, 4 from my sisters family, my Dad and his wife and their guest from China.  That was twenty-one people and three countries!! 

 Our Japanese friends said they like the turkey and sweet potatoes the best!!

It was a fun time and my kids learned just as much from our Japanese guests as they learned from us.  Some fun things we learned is they love to take pictures, and I mean a lot of pictures.  I think our dog is a rock star after seeing all the pictures they took of him.  Last of all we learned how to 'Japanese Pose'.  I took a picture of Miyako at the Turkey bowl when she wasn't expecting it.  "Wait, I didn't 'Japanese Pose'," she said, "Do it again." 

 Every picture they 'Japanese Pose'!!  

Below is a small sampling!!!

Our guests had to return to school Thanksgiving evening, so Austin loaded them up in our suburban and drove them home.  It was a lot of people to host, but we really had fun!!

The next day was even better.

We are not Black Friday shoppers.

No deal has really ever been worth fighting the crowds for, so we decided to spend the day with our kids.  In the morning we offered paying jobs for our kids to earn Christmas money.  Our three youngest took us up on our offer, Branden raked leaves, Em chose to clean out the fridge, and Ashlee cleaned baseboards.  Even though it was work I think they secretly had fun.

Next we all went and played a family game of basketball!! 

 It seems like such a simple thing but it was really fun to just play with the kids.  

NO DEADLINES, NO PLACE TO BE, JUST TOGETHER!!

That afternoon we went to the movies and took all the kids out to eat at ZUPAS!
(That's a real treat at our house.)

We finished up the evening with a trip to one of our family's favorite places, Deseret Industries.
(That's a local thrift store!)
We really wanted it to just be a relaxing fun day for the kids to feel loved by mom and dad.  It was such a simple but great day!!  Thanksgiving for us was all about being thankful for our little biggish family!!!

What do you do as a family?
I would love to hear how others spend time together.
Thanks for stopping by!