We have a lot to be thankful for this year.  To celebrate, we had 15 adults (14+) and 6 children.  Since I was a kid, our family  has traditionally celebrated Thanksgiving with the Neinhuis family (Poppa and Burt are cousins).  I believe that the families have been together on Thanksgiving for 25+ years.

We had 10 Neinhuis members (Burt, Sue, Kelly, Lucas, Tim, Jodie, Brooke, Jake, Joe, Caleb, Melissa) and 11 Theule members (Poppa, YaYa, Bub, Toby, Max, Lucy, Roly, Jeff, Jan, Emily, Nathan Bernards) on Turkey day, and Burt/Sue, Jeff/Jan, Joe/Melissa came back for breakfast the next morning.  We capped off the weekend with a pot of chocolate fondue that Jan brought over.

We got to celebrate Toby’s 38th birthday and Roly’s 4 month birthday at the Cheesecake Factory in Woodland Hills last Saturday.  At the restaurant, there was a nutrition guide on the table.  After reading that my lunch portion of Fettucine Alfredo had nearly 1600 calories, I decided that 3 bites was enough and took the remainder home for a second meal.  Lest anyone think that I left the restaurant hungry, I was quite full from splitting a 1000 calorie salad with Toby as an appetizer.

Wow, November had a lot of people visiting the Carpinteria Theules, even without including Thanksgiving (look for a separate post).

The month started off with Dad getting to experience a weekend of just children while Mom went to Oregon to visit Buddy and Cena, et. al.  She left Max, Lucy and Roly with Dad from Friday to Sunday night.  Toby’s mom was scheduled to come down for 2 weeks after the Oregon visit.

Camille and Toby came home to Carpinteria on Sunday night (much to Dad’s relief).  And they brought glad tidings of great joy.  Toby announced that the next day, her cousin Sunny Maldonado and brood (husband Jose, children Alex, Bella, Gigi and Luis) were arriving at the Santa Barbara airport to spend a week with us.  We had plenty of meals with the extended family, including the Wassons and Nawais.  Even Aaron’s sister and nieces were in town and visited.

The day after the Maldonados flew back to one of the Carolinas, our good friends the D’Elias made their annual pilgrimage to Carpinteria.  They stayed for the weekend and a good time was had by al.  The weather for our beach day was perfect.

Lucy and Camille did some great bonding activities like hair styling and sewing.  Lucy is excited to spend more time with Gran to develop her sewing skills.

We are glad and thankful to have to have so much space at our house to have our wonderful friends and family stay over and visit.

On my birthday night – we took the kids to the newly reopened SB drive-in to see ‘Megamind’. It was so fun and I highly recommend this! It only cost $15 for the 4 of us, and we watched it out of the back of our van with the seats pulled out. We brought hot cocoa and lots of blankets, as it was pretty cold.  Gran was here and watched the baby – thank you Gran!  🙂

Last weekend while Toby was in Oregon, we had a LAN party for some friends.  The older boys played Pirates Online and the younger kids rocked the Nintendo Wii.  Again, Dad was on stroller duty.