Mini Merxes 2: Thanksgiving Weekend

We were lucky enough to be invited back to Indianapolis for Thanksgiving this year. It is our 6th year to spend with the Brian's cousins and I am grateful we have this time with our extended family. And as always the food was fantastic and the company was great!

Tolan and Jodi made it this year too, which was a fun add. They live in Utah but came out to spend a week with Tolan's sisters. Jodi had the kids make a list of everything they were thankful for on rolls of paper. It was fun watching all the kids concentrating so hard. I think some of the older kids came up with 100 or more things for their lists. Here are some of our cute second cousins....

Tallie

Valencia

Daven

Kynlee (and Brady)

Hadley

There were kids sprawled all over the house with their lists.

Owen drew a picture of his family.

We had our annual Talent Show. Owen and Ellika sang Hail to the Victors while the others did a variety of piano, singing, saxophone, french horn, and dancing. All super talented kids!!

And then it was time to look through the ads!!!

The kids LOVED playing with this marble track Brady set up.

Here are all the Brown family cousins, babies included!

And here are all the Brown family cousins plus two!!

Ellika cracks me up. Here she is next to Ander who is a bit older than her, she has a love/hate relationship with anyone that is her same size. She was apparently loving Ander at this moment.

And here is the whole family minus Michael (he was at work). Great looking bunch.

It was pretty nice weather while we were there and the kids were able to play outside and get lots of energy out. Again I caught a good moment between Ellika and Beckett! And Hadley in the background.

I heard Owen say to Ellie, "This is so much better than jumping on my bed!" Silly boy.

We were able to gather for a three mile walk on Friday evening too. There is a nice paved trail behind Lisa's house. It felt good to walk outside and get a little bit of exercise after eating all weekend! Hadley was nice and strong enough to pull Owen and Ellie in the wagon....

Since they are both pretty heavy, Brian helped her out!

Lisa's family.

Ellika is sooooo stubborn! She was insistent that she didn't want to wear her coat and that she could pull the wagon.

And then she wanted to run and push the wagon. Sometimes you just have to pick you battles, and I'm pretty sure she wins most of them :)

At the end of the trail is a tunnel that had been getting a lot of graffiti, so the community asked for volunteers to paint sections of the tunnel. Brady painted this super cool train. I am so impressed!!

And Mindy painted this picture. So cool. And if you know Michael, you will see that he was the model for the picture.

And since we didn't think we had enough sweets at home we decided to head out to Coldstone!!!

Saturday morning Jared and Brian went to work taking this beam in Jared and Teresa's new house. They have so many fun ideas for their new home, I'm excited to see it when they are done!! Here is the before and they after....

It was pretty dramatic when it finally fell down. I'm disappointed I didn't have it on video.

During the demolition, the kids played upstairs. They were happy to pose for me while I took a few pictures. Aren't they all so cute??

I love a good cheesy grin!

My kids didn't want to leave they were having so much fun!

Owen took over my camera for a bit and snapped the last few pictures. They both even liked Nala, the dog. Although it did take Ellie a day to get used to her.