Thanksgiving 2015

Thursday, November 26, 2015

I don't have any pictures from Thanksgiving this year!! I think we went to my parents' house along with my sister and her family.

Day after Thanksgiving

Friday, November 28

The day after Thanksgiving MJ decided that she wanted to paint my nails.  After that we took out the Christmas tree and started decorating for Christmas!

Later on in the day my brother took his boys and M&M and Luke to the movie theater to watch Penguins of Madagascar.  Then everyone came over to our house for some pizza dinner and some hanging out!

Thanksgiving 2014

Thursday, November 27

My oldest brother and his family were in town for Thanksgiving so we had a big dinner at my parents' house on Thanksgiving.

Here are a few pictures from that day:

My sister's newest baby boy!

Decorating for Christmas!

Wednesday, November 21

DH was really excited to get the tree up early this year and so on Wednesday after he came home from work he got out the tree and had the kids help him with it.  I told him that that was fine if he wanted to, but I wouldn't be able to get the decorations out until after Thanksgiving (since I was busy making some pies and jello for Thanksgiving dinner).  MJ was really excited to help and as she handed the tree branches to her dad she would say, "Merry Christmas!"

Then on Thanksgiving morning we got out the Christmas lights and put them up on the house.  It was really nice weather for it.

Then the following week I went over to my parents' house and got up on the roof for my dad to help him hang his lights!  I was quite nervous at first but it ended up not being too bad and I was glad to help them out.

Thanksgiving 2012

Thursday, November 22

M&M and I made an apple pie with the last of the apples from our apple trees.  M&M wanted to try the lattice top for the pie and it turned out pretty good.  It was a really good pie.  We also made a pumpkin chiffon pie and the layered pumpkin jello that the kids love and then DH made the mashed (whipped) potatoes.

Thanksgiving dinner was at my parents' house with my sister and her family there as well.

Thanksgiving Week Pictures 2011

For Thanksgiving this year we had my oldest brother and his family and then my two younger siblings and their families. I think this was the first time that my girls have been outnumbered by their boy cousins! The three siblings that were visiting each have two boys now and no girls, so we had 5 girls and 7 boys! It was a fun day having us all together!

Yummy chocolate!

A couple of weeks ago one of the Activity Day groups in our ward brought by some chocolate turkey cupcakes that they had made. MJ really enjoyed hers!

Thanksgiving 2010

I just realized that I haven't written a post about Thanksgiving this year. We stayed at home this year and invited my sister and her husband and little boy over for dinner. My parents were up in Idaho again this year with my oldest brother's family. I made the rolls, pumpkin pie, and jello dish the day before Thanksgiving so I kept sitting around the house Thanksgiving morning wondering why I wasn't busier. I like to cook the turkey in the oven bags because it keeps it very moist and it cuts down on the cooking time - only 2 hours for a 15 lb turkey. My sister brought the sweet potatoes and an apple pie. MJ ended up sleeping during most of the dinner which was awesome for me! Baby W seemed to enjoy all of the attention and chaos - at least until the end when he was getting really tired. Kay enjoyed bringing toys up for him and even tried to pick him up once (by the neck)! It was a nice enjoyable time for all.

Thanksgiving week

We decided about a week before Thanksgiving that we were going to make a trip up to Coeur d'Alene, ID to visit family for the holidays. My oldest brother and his family live there and DH's brother and family live just next door in Cheney, WA. DH's brother was going to be baptizing his oldest daughter the Saturday following Thanksgiving so we stayed with my brother and had Thanksgiving with them and then spent Saturday and part of Friday with DH's family.

My parents also decided to tag along with us so we caravanned up together and all stayed at my brother's. We left on Wednesday and the drive took us a little over 10 hours (which is making some great time!) and we ended up getting up there around 4 in the afternoon. The kids had a BLAST playing with all of their cousins for the few days we were together. My brother has 2 boys that are M&M and Luke's ages and my brother-in-law has 3 girls that are in-between our kids' ages (and then a baby boy). We were also able to see my younger brother and his wife and little boy - he's such a cutie!

We were glad that we were able to be there for the baptism and we spent some time with DH's parents also who were in town for the even too. The unfortunate part about our trip was that DH ended up getting sick the day after we got there (Thanksgiving) and stayed sick the the whole visit. Then on Saturday when we were leaving my brother-in-law's house I twisted my ankle coming down the stairs and was in a lot of pain for the next couple of days. It swelled up pretty nicely and I had to hobble around the rest of our trip. We drove to downtown Coeur d'Alene Sunday evening and looked at a few of the light displays along the lake but because of my condition and DH still being sick we didn't stay too long.

We drove back home Monday morning and made good time again. Kitty threw up twice in the car on the way home but was fine the next day and no one else got sick. When we finally pulled in our garage we discovered that our smoke alarms were going off inside the house. DH and I quickly ran in and searched all through the house and couldn't find anything wrong. It took us a while to turn them all off but we were finally able to bring the kids in the house and start unloading the car. We have no idea how long the alarms had been going off and what set them off - possibly just some dust that got into one of the alarms. It was nice to get home, but the kids had a hard time going back to school the next day. DH is still recovering from his cold/sinus infection and I am still limping slightly from my injury...

Thanks to everyone for feeding and housing our family! We know that it is not an easy task with a family of seven!! We were also grateful that we had good traveling conditions for both of our days of travel. I understand that the road can be quite treacherous in the wintertime.

This is the only picture I got with both of them looking at the camera!!
Three goofy girls!
M&M and Luke were introduced to the game of Clue by their cousins and had a blast playing it.
M&M looks like she's ready to accuse here...

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We wish we could have been with more family!
We just had a small Thanksgiving meal with our family this year. My parents went to Michigan to be with my sister's family and my sister that lives nearby had to work Thanksgiving Day - so she and her husband came over the day after for leftovers.

Here is a list of some of the things I am thankful for:
- my wonderful husband who supports our family so I can stay home with the little ones
- 5 beautiful, healthy children
- the house over our heads
- good food
- this free land we live in
- my membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Fall School Projects

Here are some projects that the kids brought home from school:

Luke's scarecrow
Blondie's haunted house
The story to go along with Blondie's house (they dictated the story to their teacher who then typed them up).
Blondie the spider
And here is a picture of Baby K who I apparently put too close to the stairway banister and she took advantage of my mistake. Look at how pleased she is with herself!!

Fort Vancouver

On Wednesday afternoon, November 21st, we went to visit Fort Vancouver. This is one place that I have wanted to see since DH & I got married but things just haven't worked out until this trip we finally made it. I must say that I was somewhat disappointed though. Half of the buildings were closed and there just wasn't a lot to do there. Apparently it is a site that is better to visit in the summer time when more people and workers are around. It was also a freezing day with a bitterly cold wind!

OMSI

On Tuesday, November 20th, we went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland. I was really surprised with how kid friendly the museum was. The kids all had a blast there - there was so much hands on stuff to do! There were a lot of science experiments and stations where the kids could build things. We spent close to 4 hours there and we probably could have easily spent another couple of hours! I think it will definitely be on our list of things to do on future visits.

Luke played a Connect 4 game with robotic arms against an older kid and beat him without any help!

At this station the kids were able to take small paper cups and cut them so that they would fly up in the air under these wind machines. They had a lot of fun taking the cups, throwing them onto the machine and watching them fly up into the air. Some of them went pretty high up and would stay up there for a little while.

The Van de Graaff generator was pretty fun to play with. You could stand up on the crate at the base of it and put one hand on the ball while holding these small metal tins in your hand. Then when someone cranked the belt to generate static electricity, the tins would go flying off your hand one at a time. M&M got shocked pretty good on it though when someone touched her while she was holding on...

Check out Kitty's hair!

Here are the kids pretending they are penguins sliding down the ice.