Skillet Concert

 

 

     Ever since Jadon was three months old he has loved the band, Skillet. Three months old you ask? Yes! LOL. Jay would turn up the radio in the car when Jadon was crying and he would only calm down when Skillet was played. This continued on and we would actually play it as his "sleepy time" music. We could lay him down anywhere and as long as we played Skillet he would go to sleep! Now you can always hear him listening to their songs on YouTube while he plays Minecraft. :)

     Today Jadon received the best early birthday present from his big Sissy! She was surprising him and taking him to his first ever concert, SKILLET!! When he posed for this first picture below he had no idea! He just thought he was going out with his Sissy. I made her promise to take lots of pictures and I screened shot some that she posted along the way.



 

 

What an awesome gift! We are trying to be creative and focus our gift giving on creating memories rather than collecting stuff. Well she hit it out of the park with this one!

Christmas with the Cousins

Tonight started our five days of Christmas celebrations.  We went over to my sister's house for a night of food, games, gifts and fun.  Brandy bought some cute little props that we had fun taking pictures with.  Grandma got both families the Pie Face game and that was a big hit with all the kids. It was a great time playing wiht the cousins and of course the kids all loved opening the gifts the best.

This is 11 of the 14 cousins on my side of the family.

The Girls

The boys

These are the oldest two only two weeks apart in age.

These two are the closest in age only 1 day apart.

These two are 4 months apart.

Believe it or not these two "babies of each family" are only 6 weeks apart.

Then we tell these girls they make up their own group.  : )

We couldn't be left out.

All the grandkids with Papaw and Grandma

Then I am not sure how it exactly worked out but all the kids stayed the night at Brandy's except Anastasia.  She was excited on getting to sleep in for her birthday!  Whoo hoo!

Thanksgiving

I pretty much love all holidays and a reason to celebrate with family and friends!  We spend Thanksgiving morning in the kitchen cooking and watching the Macy's Day parade.  LOVE IT!  This year Joshua helped Jay with the stuffing and the turkey.  The rest of the crew helped me make all the sides and desserts.  Jay's sister and kids were staying with us this year so there were lots of helpers in the kitchen.

On the menu: Turkey (of course), dressing, deviled eggs, cranberry jello salad, corn pudding, pumpkin pies, pecan pies and apple pie, green beans, rolls and homemade bread, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and a relish tray.  Those are all traditional favorites.  I tried a new recipe this year.  It was a baked apple brie.  Definitely a keeper.  They great thing about cooking all that food is then I don't have to cook the rest of the weekend!

My mom and dad and Jay's dad and Donna joined us for dinner.  After we eat it is our tradition to get the Christmas tree up (so that Freddy our elf can arrive).  The kids also then pick names for which sibling they are going to get a gift for for Christmas. Jutem, and my mom looked at all the Black Thursday adds with Anastasia and got her all excited about going shopping but then they both bailed.  So I ended up taking her.  It is not my thing since it all starts on Thursday now.  So Jutem stayed with the kids and Jay was our chauffeur.  It was Anastasia's first time going on Black Thursday/Friday.  We hit Wal-mart and Target and got a few good deals.  I would much rather shop on Amazon in my jammies.  : )

Savannah made the deviled eggs all by herself!

Cousins!

The girls didn't want grandma to leave!

Shopping with Anastasia

Playing games

Fall

It would be so AMAZING to take a stroll through that picture above! I love fall.  I love all seasons but there is something about the reprieve of heat in the desert that fall brings.  We are still waiting for it!  The calendar says it is fall and so does Starbucks with it's Pumpkin Lattes and Pinterest with it's pumpkin everything boards.  However, our weather here still says summer!

Alas, I put up the fall decor start some baking and just crank down the AC (not too much though as I am really beyond done with the summer AC bills.  

It has to come soon.... 

So the calendar says fall and October so it was time to make our yearly pumpkin spice playdough.  I have been making this since Anastasia was at least Jadon's age and even my big kids still look forward to it.  :)

As you can clearly see in the picture above it is still swimming weather.  The kids stay in their swimsuits and go swimming for their breaks through out the day.  LOL 

 Apples, of course are all on sale right now so we bought a bunch to make some homemade apple sauce.  And later in the week we made homemade meatballs. 

  Feeling quite homey and proud of myself as I might be a stay at home, homeschooling mom with great cookware but it is still such a chore for me to be in the kitchen all day and it not always my favorite place to be. I really need to be in the mood. I would rather be planning lessons or reading or taking out the trash.....not really Ha!  But I have gotten much better at cooking and meal planning.  Jay is definitely the one with the knack for spicing things up and experimenting and I am the one to just get it to the table.   However, now that my kids are older I try to engage them even more and they love to help.  There are so many great life skills to learn in the kitchen. 
: )