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

Packing lunches

This was our second year being able to help pack lunches with Acts of Hope.  It is a ministry that passes out lunches to the homeless on Thanksgiving day.  We were really wanting to go as a family this year and help pass out the lunches but Jay has hurt his leg and a couple of the kids were fighting illnesses.  It is definitely something we will do next year.

A friend of mine coordinates this each year.  We just hosted it and several families came over to help.  The kids all make assembly lines, putting stickers on bags, making peanut butter sandwiches and filling the bags with fruit, water and a snack.  We were able to pack 150 lunches in just under two hours!  What a great ministry.

Jadon's Birthday (and Thanksgiving)

We have another terrific TWO year old in the house once again!! Jadon is such a delight to us all. He is such a ham and makes us all laugh all the time. This year his birthday happened to be the day before Thanksgiving which is fitting because he is our little Turkey! So we had two fabulous days of celebrating this wonderful little man!

Love this picture!

Some of Jadon's Favorite things:

1. He loves to fight with swords and bop it sticks. He will sneak up behind you and get you when you least expect it.

2. Somehow he picked up the word "need" instead of "want". So he will say, "Mama, I need my milk. Mama I need food. etc it is so funny.

3. He is already speaking full sentences.

4. He plays the I love you game. He will say I love you in three different tones.

5. He loves Diego, Woody and Buzz, and Cars

6. He already has a great sense of humor and will try and scare people and loves to play games with his brother and sisters.

What a wonderful BOY!!!!

So on his birthday morning we let him open the gift from us:

It was this Cars chair. He loves it! He would sit in it though for the longest time because he wanted to just look at the back of it (where his back goes) and see the picture. He calls it "my cars chair".

Then that night we went to Zoo Lights at the Phoenix zoo. It is a tradition for our family and this happened to be a member's preview night so it wasn't too crowded. Especially since it was the night before Thanksgiving.

Papa and Grandma came with us.

Then the next day (Thanksgiving) the celebration continued. Along with our pie for dessert we had Jadon's birthday cake, which Anastasia made. For the last few weeks, every time I light a candle in the house, Jadon shouts "birthday cake" and he tries to blow it out. So when it was time for his actual cake he was very excited. He even joined in in singing Happy Birthday. ;)

Cousins

Papaw and Grandma with all the grand kids.

Ummmm.....Yea......caught in the act.....we better watch out! LOL

Count our Blessings

Count your blessings, name them one by one,Count your blessings, see what God has done!
Count your blessings, name them one by one,Count your many blessings, see what God has
done.

It is our yearly tradition on November 1st to start our blessing tree. Each day, usually at lunch, everyone has to fill out a leaf with something they are thankful for. The only rules are that you can not repeat yourself and you can not repeat what someone else says on that same day.
As our family has grown, our tree fills up really fast! We do this until Thanksgiving day.



Here is a great new project I found for fall.... I painted the kids hands in brown paint to make the tree and then they used their fingers to make the leaves. So cute!

Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

It was a quiet Thanksgiving this year. Not quite all the excitement of last year with bringing home a new baby! We of course started our day with watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then we began cooking. Jay and I are both big on traditions and I always think about what memories our kids are going to have about the holidays when they are grown.

Both sets of parents/grandparents came over for dinner but they both left quite early as well.

So we decided to get out our Christmas tree and start putting it up. The kids were so excited as they opened ornaments from previous years and the memories came back to them. Natasha carried her Dora ornament around most of the night! We only got the lights on the tree and then decided to wait till the next day to finish up.

I needed to go take a 3 hr. nap so I could be up and ready to hit the stores at mid-night for Black Friday! Jay and I both went and I have decided that I can go at 4 or 5 am after some sleep but it was not worth going at midnight and being out all night. There was nothing we just had to have, we just like to "people watch" and let me tell you there are ALL kinds of people out on that night!! ;)