Fakesgiving Fun

This past Saturday, we continued a Monaghan Family tradition of celebrating Fakesgiving. We celebrate Thanksgiving on a different day so that my siblings and I can spend the real holiday with our spouses'/boyfriend's/girlfriend's family. We have loved doing this for a few years and we always have a great day.



The kids looked adorable in their little Thanksgiving sweaters. We did, of course, attempt to get pictures with all three paying attention, but it will be a miracle if that ever happens! This is as close as we can get...





Our girl




Poor Jack wasn't feeling well that day- more on that later.



Ben

How cute are they all dressed up?

No one is looking at the camera, but at least they are all in the same picture and Mairead is not running away!

The boys loved having company

They had a race over to their uncle, Steve.

We welcomed two new family members to Fakesgiving this year-- Jen and Mike and Brian and Christin adopted puppies (on National Adoption Day, no less)!

This is Bean (named after Beantown) and she belongs to Jen and Mike.

This is Emmet (named after Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas).

The dogs were very well behaved- especially impressive since there were three little kids and 14 adults here that day!

Christin introduced Jack to the puppies.

You may remember that Jen and Mike gave Mairead a drum and tambourine a while ago. That had to be brought out for some noisy fun.

Then, things got a little out of control...

Always a lady, my daughter...

Maybe this explains it...

Juice, Mom?

We had a great day- an especially fun part was the game we created to guess the name of Katie and Steve's daughter, who should be joining us very soon! You could have three guesses for $5. If someone guesses right, he or she wins the money. If no one does, Katie and Steve take home the pot. There were some very 'creative' guesses, that's for sure! Katie and Steve told us that someone DID actually guess right- so now we just have to wait until she is born for the winner to be revealed. Whatever her name is, we can't wait to meet her!

In other news, the kids have been sick this week. It has NOT been fun, as you might imagine. If you have ever had a sick baby, imagine TWO sick babies (and a sick toddler). It's exhausting. They all had nasty colds and were just miserable. Mairead takes good care of herself- she sleeps late, drinks lots of fluids, and plays quietly. She has really not been any trouble- she even tells me when she needs a tissue- it's very cute.

Jack and Ben, on the other hand, have been miserable. They had 100 degree fevers, runny noses, coughs, and a little vomiting. Ben had terrible gas from all the mucus he was swallowing and was just inconsolable, which is SO not like him. Needless to say, there was very little sleeping going on here in the past few days. We are so lucky that we have my parents to help us out. Even with four adults, it was tough, we would have been in really rough shape if Dave and I were alone.

They seem to have turned a corner- there were a few uninterrupted hours of sleep last night and no one has thrown up in over 24 hours. Hooray for small victories!

We hope that our little ones are 100% better soon- it is going to be a long winter if they are sick often. Let's hope they stay healthy!

On that note- Happy Thanksgiving to all of you-- we know that we have SO much to be thankful for. Our amazing children are happy and healthy (overall), and with our experiences, we know that things could have gone differently and that they could have all kinds of health problems. Each of them is a miracle and we know how lucky and blessed we are to have them.

There is so much more that we are thankful for, but right now I have to go be thankful that Mairead is getting up after sleeping late, so I am off to bring her downstairs. She is yelling, "No bed!" over the monitor...