Thanksgiving 2009 aka Skousen-palooza!

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving with my family. EVERYONE was able to be here so of course we tried to cram as much as we could into one day since we're not all together very often. We ended up calling it "Skousen-palooza" because of everything we did. Thank goodness we were able to reserve my parent's ward house or we would have never fit everyone! We started out Thanksgiving morning around 10:00 with family pictures. You can imagine with 38 people what mayhem that was. But I think they turned out pretty good. (thanks to "Beans" for coming and taking the pictures!)

This is what happens when you have 8 kids!

We bribed the kids....we told them we'd do some goofy pictures if they would smile good for the other pictures. It totally worked!

Granny Annie and Grandpa Harry with all 21 grand kids!

Top left-right: Jennifer, Karen, Melissa

Middle left to right: Me, Laurel, Amy, Heidi

Bottom: Matt

After like 4 hours of picture taking (I'm not kidding either) it was time for the feast! It was delicious!

Andrew was falling asleep!


Mary, Harry, Riley and Brooklyn



Matt, Lauren and Mattison live in California. This was their first time meeting Brooklyn. Matti loved her!

Jenny, Ben, Noah, Mollie and Carter live in Arizona. This was Mollie and Noah's first time meeting Brooklyn


So after dinner, we did crafts, games, movies a fish pond for the kids and few people actually got a nap (I was not one of them). Then we spent a few hours filming "Skousen's got talent.......or do they?" Everyone did something and it was a lot of fun. By then it was around 7:00 pm, so we got out leftover turkey and made sandwiches, etc.... then dad set up a big screen in the cultural hall. We watched "Skousen's got talent.....or do they?" and all of out Christmas videos that everyone made early so we could all be together when we watched them.(ours is posted below). That was the highlight of the whole day! Everyone's was so clever and funny! That is such a fun tradition.

THEN (sigh) we celebrated November and December birthdays with cupcakes and birthday wishes. We also decided that since we were all together, we would do our Christmas gift exchange a little early. We picked names (couples choose another couple and grankids choose another grandkid).

We also decided we would get our parent's gift early so we could see them open it together. We got them a Scanner that scans negatives and pictures and makes them digital. They loved it and of course we children will get some use out of it too (snicker~SNICKER!). after clean-up we were out of the church by 11:00 pm!

So it was a very busy day but it was so much and we made a lot of good memories. We better start planning Thanksgiving 2011! Hahahahahaha!