Our Thanksgiving Weekend

Ben had to work on Thanksgiving Day, but he did have the day before Thanksgiving off of work... so naturally, we decided to do a Thanksgiving dinner on his day off. Considering we were cooking much of the day it really was quite a relaxing time. Ben invited a couple of his single friends from work, who also wouldn't be able to travel home for the holiday, to come over and join us. Ben's parents and cousin Adam also feasted with us... it was a great evening and the food was delicious. I always feel like we've accomplished quite a feat every time we pull together a full Thanksgiving dinner, but when Ben is helping it's actually fun and not very stressful. I definitely have a good cook of a husband! I'm just a bit disappointed that I didn't get a picture of our guests... I guess we were too busy chatting to bother. :)









Becca was anxious for dinner, so I gave her a piece of bread to hold her over till we were all ready to eat

Before dinner the kids colored these Thanksgiving placemats, which I printed off from this great site.

Ben's dad carving up our turkey for us :)

On Thanksgiving Day we went to Ben's parents home to hang out, help cook, and eat, eat, eat. :) Ben was busy at work while we were busy celebrating - he said that the hospital cafeteria was nice though and offered some great Thanksgiving food, however, that's all they had all day... so he ate Thanksgiving food for lunch, dinner, and midnight snack (he was on call so he stayed overnight). Even though we missed Ben, we had a great day -



Ben's mom made another lovely pilgrim dress so that Becca could match Emma this year... Jake then got to be our token Indian ;) (I can say that right? Since I'm a small part Native American myself?)











On Friday night we put up our Christmas tree and decorated it all pretty... with the kids help. They are remarkably helpful in getting ornaments on the tree - it's a good sign for later on down the road. Someday I'd like to just lie around on the couch and watch as the kids get our tree all decorated. Wouldn't that be nice?









Becca lining up the nutcrackers in a nice straight row... very Becca-like

On Saturday we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox (Ben had Saturday and Sunday off of work, so he was able to join us this time). Everyone really LOVED it... I missed most of it due to a cranky 8 month old (who I really thought would sleep through much of the movie.. darn!). Anyway, the parts I did see were hillarious and FANTASTIC.


The kids posing in the theater lobby... we don't see movies much, so yes, we were a bit excited. :)

Ben's parents then treated us all to dinner at Macaroni Grill (my favorite!). It's tradition with dessert to all dive in with our forks - when Ben does this, he'll often try to knock my food off my fork... rude!


Emma and Becca slept over at grandma's house that Saturday night, so Ben and I stopped at Target to do a bit of Christmas shopping for the girls on our way back home... we got a few things to get us started, but I definitely have a lot of work to do till we're really ready for Christmas morning. The next day we got to go to church without wrangling our two girlies into dresses and hair-doing. :) So, it was a pretty relaxed Sunday - we picked them up from Grandma's on Sunday evening, where we also enjoyed another family dinner and our first Advent of the Christmas season.

Tonight for Family Home Evening, Ben told the kids the story of Christ's birth and we put up our nativities. I'm always amazed when they come out of their packaging without any cracks or breaks.




Ben brought this nativity home from his mission in Guatemala

.. also from Guatemala



Ben's brother Peter got us this one from Ukraine (where he served his mission)

To sum up - we had a great Thanksgiving weekend! And now that we're decorated for Christmas, I'm ready for more holiday fun! :)

"Find Mr. Turkey"

To Play: One person (we'll call this person "the farmer") hides, while the rest of the group hides a turkey. The farmer then tries to find his lost turkey by following the sounds of the gobbles. The louder the gobble, the closer he is.
The video below shows our attempt at playing :)

Pilgrims and Indians

Cutest Pilgrims and Indian ever!

Christmas time! Christmas time! Christmas time is here! :) I can't believe that it's almost December - woohoo! This is my favorite time of the year. Parties, desserts, family time, traditions, presents... etc, etc.... there's just so much I love about the holidays. Thanksgiving is definitely one of them and we had a great one. I was sooo happy because Ben ended up getting Thanksgiving Day off (hooray!). I was bummed at first because he was supposed to go in on Friday to work, so he headed off Friday morning around 6:30 and much to my surprise was home shortly after 9am. I guess they got through with their patients and Ben got to have a super short day! And he had Saturday and Sunday off as well, so easy peasy. :) I was just so relieved and happy to have Ben home with us for Thanksgiving. What a blessing! We headed to Gilbert on Wednesday evening to spend a couple nights at Ben's parents house. We spent that night making my mother-in-law's famous potato rolls (love them!). On Thursday we cooked most of the day and somehow it wasn't chaotic and was actually relaxing. It was probably due to the fact that we were a small group and we weren't having tons of extended family come visit, so there wasn't much pressure to have stuff done at a certain time or anything. The menu was yummy and Ben and I did lots of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes: chestnut apple stuffing (THE best!!), cranberry sauce, green beans with tomatoes, maple glazed turkey, cider gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and of course mashed potatoes, pie, and all the yummy potato rolls (you'll notice from the links that we're a little obsessed with martha recipes). It was quite the feast and we enjoyed plenty of leftovers later. That evening Ben's parents were super nice and sent us off to the movies to see Bond while they stayed with the kids and cleaned up dinner. Awesome! Aren't they the coolest?! :) I love this new James Bond, btw... way cooler than Pierce Brosnan! On Friday some of the family did Black Friday shopping - I avoided that this year, but Ben did go run a quick errand to Walmart during all the craziness and happened to get Kung Fu Panda for 9 dollars. Good deal! :) The girls started up work on a new sewing project - we're making Happy Birthday banners - we got a good chunk of the work done over the weekend and they're going to be super cute when they're all done! We also all went and saw Bolt - cute movie... the hamster is hillarious! Friday evening we went to the Mesa Temple to see them turn on the Christmas lights - it was a lovely evening - just cold enough to need a sweater but we weren't freezing our hiney's off (not that I don't LOVE seeing the temple lights in Salt Lake, but that's always part of the experience... watching the lights while feeling like your appendages are going to fall off... but it's a great excuse for hot chocolate!). Saturday morning we went to the zoo and once again, the weather was great! The kids really loved the carousel and we even got to pet the sting rays. We also did some shopping and ate out for dinner and soon we headed back to our neglected house. Today we got started decorating for Christmas, but we still need to hang the ornaments on the tree. It's a lot of work to decorate for Christmas! But I sure to love the end result. Hooray for the holidays!