Turkey Name Tags & the Kiddos Thanksgiving this year was in Kimberly (Twin Falls), Idaho with the Merrick clan.  Zach and Rochelle spent three nights at Lee's mom's, and we spent four.  The other "local" siblings drove in every day to hang out.  It was great to get so much time together!

Elaine hosted Thanksgiving dinner at her house and all of the wives contributed to the dinner.  We had hoped to participate in a Turkey Trot that morning, but it never came together.   Lee and I ended up doing our own instead.  In true Merrick fashion, the boys and Karlette were busy clearing property and being productive up until the time dinner was served at 4pm.  Kate, Eli and I made hand turkeys for place settings for everyone.  They turned out really cute.  Bryce smoked the turkeys and everyone's contributions were delicious.  Family Picture! You could tell we were all dessert lovers as each of us contributed at least one to weekend.  Cookies, bars, pies were coming out our ears!   After Thanksgiving dinner we managed to get in a casual family picture that wasn't from a wedding photo shoot.  We think it turned out pretty well!

The Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend were pretty chill.  The mornings were spent hanging out with Max and Miles at Karlette's house until a game plan was made for the day.   Their new favorite game is hide and seek and they are pretty stealthy little hiders!  Needless to say I did a lot of counting and "seeking".   

Jump Time fun Our big outings of the weekend were first to Jump Time, a giant indoor gymnasium of trampolines and blow up slides.  The kids loved the foam pit and spent the majority of the time there.   We got a kick out of watching them.   We also attended (from a near by dirt mound in a construction site) Twin Fall's "Christmas in the Nighttime Sky" event.  They shoot off a bunch of fireworks to Christmas music.  It was warm enough outside that it was pretty fun.    The second big outing was driving out to Buhl for the kids to ride Aunt Whitney's horse and to see and feed the fish at the fish farm.  The kids loved both activities.  Each kid got to spend a few minutes on the horse and they LOVED feeding the hungry fish. Max's Horse Ride

Otherwise we had several family dinners, played some great games with the kids and had good hangout time.  Whitney introduced us to a new game, Farkle, that the aunts and kids really had fun playing together.  It may need to be a new addition to our game collection. 

Link to our photos is here.