This Thanksgiving we are thankful for...

...a forgiving family.  So here is what happened:  The Tuesday before Thanksgiving Tommy had "loose bowels" and while he was never to sick to play or eat, he still had it for a full day.  Since he was still acting so normal I didn't find it concerning enough to not allow Karin, Oma, Aunt Liz and Stephie over to visit (why so many visitors in one day?  I still don't know other than a cruel twist of fate).  Flash forward to Thanksgiving morning.  I wake up feeling slightly ill and about 5 minutes later I was done for.  I had the stomach flu-full force:(  I called my Mom to tell her I was going to have to be absent from the festivities when she tole me that both Aunt Liz and Karin had come down with the same stomach flu the night before.  Yikes-What had I done!!  At this point we knew this was a VERY catchy stomach flu so for the safety of others attending, Karin, my family and Aunt Liz's family all had to stay home for the day while the other half of the Mausser family still got together to celebrate.  I was beyond disappointed.  Tommy had his little Indian costume that he made at school and he was going to march around Grandma and Papa's house while we played games and ate turkey sandwiches into the late hours of the night.  Obviously those dreams had to be changed up a bit.  Instead we dressed the boys up and Rob picked up some of the food from my parents house for him and the boys to enjoy.  Here are some pictures of our very small celebration.  Please excuse the lousy pictures but to be honest, I wasn't much in the mood to capture memories at that time:)

I never realized what a ham Jack already is:)

Tommy's face pretty much sums up the day

So after I started to recover that night and felt pretty much back to normal the next morning we decided it was safe to trek it out to Buffalo for my in-laws festivities.

All was going great until...

...Rob ended up sick, locked in the guest bedroom all by his lonesome, while the rest of us hung out downstairs.  Nina and Grandpa took the boys to see Santa and while there were no tears (hooray) Grandpa had no choice but to be in the picture due to Tommy's death grip on him.

 Cheese!

And if bringing sickness to their home wasn't enough, we also showed up with Karin's boyfriend Chad's little doggy who, much to our dismay, left some doggy poopies in their bedroom and living room.  We love you Mia-but snow or not, poopies go outside! :)

So to all of our wonderful loving family-we are SORRY- to have started the spread of this horrible virus.  Thank you though for reinforcing to us how blessed we are to have you as our family and loving us despite all of that:)  We love you!  Can't wait for make-up Thanksgiving  at Grandma and Papa's tomorrow.  We love you all!!