The population of Aurora, Iowa nearly doubles on Thanksgiving Day each year. The town of about 180 people is flooded with about 120 members of the Brunkhorst family. This year, the gathering highlighted the family's thankfulness for veterans.

Each veteran in the family received a Quilt of Honor, a gift that's a token of thanks to those who have served. This all began last year with Mary Culver intervening when her mom, Marlene, wanted to begin sewing Quilts of Honor for her American Legion post in Illinois.

"Mom was starting to make quilts for the

and I said, 'mom before you do that, let’s start with our own family, our own veterans,'" Culver explained.

She then had to figure out just how many veterans were in the family. Culver originally thought there were nine, but quickly the number grew.

She said, "I was interviewing the people that (my mom) told me to start with. Her cousins, her brother, they would turn around and say, 'well aren’t you going to interview so and so?'"

Culver figured out there were 20 veterans in the family. It took her 10 months to make all of the quilts.

On Thanksgiving Day with almost all of the Brunkhorst family gathered, Culver handed out each quilt one by one, sharing a story from each veteran.

"Private Joseph Crene," Culver announced to the family. "The thing Joe liked the most was talking to all the soldiers as they came back from the Japanese POW camps."

Culver also handed out quilts to her two sons. Sean Cavanaugh says he's proud of his mom for doing this, and he's happy he now knows more about the fellow vets in the family.

"It's cool knowing that yes, they're my brothers and sisters in arms and uniform, but this is my family," he said.

Uncle Phil Brunkhorst, who served in the Army from 1968 to 1970, appreciated the recognition.

"When I got out of the service, you know they didn’t care about us. We just came home, you know and no parade no nothing," he said.

Culver is happy she was able to do this for her family and encourages other people to do it as well.