Thanksgiving 2011

This year my brother and his wife weren't going to make it home for Thanksgiving anyway, so my mom and other 2 siblings took off to lands unknown....not really, but they did head out to "greener pastures". That left my little family to attend only one Thanksgiving day feast instead of the annual TWO we usually go to. After cleaning like a crazy person despite not having any company staying with us, and making my contributions to dinner on Wednesday and Thursday, we were off to spend some quality family and turkey time with the Waite's! Of course, I had to capitalize on the extra bodies around and get someone to take a family picture of us before the gluton-ness eating began. Let me tell you, Ry had already begun eating and taking away his precious crescent roll was not even an option, and Brody in his typical 3 year old way was doing anything but smiling or even LOOKING at the camera. So, if you can find JUST ONE good one out of all these, that's one more than I could find. After the 5 minute 'photoshoot' it was time to EAT!!!! Oh my, it was so delicious! There was good food and good company and it was just enjoyable being with one another. My family dug in and ate like we usually do...Trevor overate and felt like bursting, but still managed to cram in 2 pieces of pie. I ate my fair share, but left enough room for me to snack on food for the rest of the day. Brody in his latest eating fashion claimed that it was all yucky, but then ate it at a VERY slow pace. Ryder got his shirt stripped and stuffed fistfuls of food in his mouth. I mean, EVERYTHING that was placed before him was gobbled up until he out-ate his brother that is 2 years older than him. I really don't know where he put it all. It was quite a day, and as Brody said to everyone (because he refused to say thanksgiving for some reason), "Happy Turkey Day!"

Halloween 2011

Before Thanksgiving comes I figured I better get a post and pictures up of our Halloween this year! We woke up to a really nice day. Probably one of the nicest Halloween weather I can remember. I decided I wanted to make the day a little extra special for our family, so I was going to prepare a Halloween dinner.

Me and the boys, along with our nephew Aftyn ran a few errands and got some things I needed for our fun dinner, and at each store we went in Brody told the cashier's "happy halloween!" He even earned himself and Aftyn a sucker at one store.

We spent the rest of the morning playing, napping, making dinner preparations, and waiting until it was time to join the annual Halloween Parade! Of course, we had to hit some bumps along the way. It can never be that easy or that simple for me to do nice fun things for my family. I had made a cheese ball, but shaped it into a headstone and grave. It turned out really cute and Brody enjoyed helping make it. But I got a phone call....I left the room.....Brody thought it would be fun to make a moat around the cheeseball, so he surrounded it in water! Now I can laugh about it, but then....well then.....I was SOOO mad! It was not my proudest parenting moment. I just felt so deflated. Like, "why do I go to the extra trouble to do something nice, and it just gets destroyed or makes things harder?" Brody was in so much trouble. Sometimes I read other people's blogs and they seem like such "nicer" parents than me. They probably would have handled it better than I did. Seriously.

Moving on....I was able to salvage most of the gravestone cheeseball, and despite threatening that no parade and no trick-or-treating was going to be in his near future...Brody did get to participate, and I did end up having an ok night.

The parade, like usual, was nothing too big, but my kids love it. They think they are so cool to walk around in their costumes and have people wave and honk to their cute little selfs. Aftyn came with us too, and it was fun having the 3 boys together. Once again though, we had a few problems. Costume malfunctions with Brody's chaps caused us to be at the very end of the group just trying to keep him together. Plus, with basketball practice just having started that day Coach Waite was gone and it was me vs. 3. Call me crazy, I know.

After Trevor got home and before trick-or-treating we had our Halloween feast. It was a mummy pork tenderloin, baked potatoes, gravestone cheeseball, and bats and pumpkins jello jigglers. Kinda a lot of work, but fun for everyone else. Pretty tasty too.

Trick-or-treating was the most fun ever this year. I imagine it'll just get more fun as the kids get bigger, but it was great this time! We did go to a few houses besides just the grandparents. Ry just stood next to Brody the whole time, but Brody was the only one really collecting candy and he had practiced (a lot) saying, "We are here! Trick-or-Treat!" Who wouldn't want to give those two stinkin' cute kids all the candy they had? Man, they were cute. One lady dresses like a witch and had "brews" homemade rootbeer to hand out. Brody wasn't too excited about it until he drank it and then he said it was "yummy, and tasty, and GOOD!"

Overall, despite a slightly hectic day, FUN Halloween! My kids got just enough candy for them to have a few pieces now and again (and some for mom and dad too), but not so much to rot their teeth out. Brody insisted on being a cowboy because he remembers being one last year, and the giraffe costume Ry wore is my favorite costume of all so not only did they like their costumes, they looked dang cute too!

Carving Jack-o-Lanterns

Roughly 6 years ago Trevor and I had a pumpkin carving contest. He won. Maybe because he won by carving "will you marry me?" into the pumpkin, or maybe because I said yes. Take your pick. I already enjoyed the tradition of carving pumpkins, but this just made me hold it a little more dear to my heart. Trevor probably never should have asked me to marry him that way because he doesn't particularly like to carve pumpkins, but I make him each year.

Truthfully its not like I have to drag Trev kicking and screaming to carve pumpkins, but I am met with some resistance, and a little grumbling each time. Although we didn't buy pumpkins until 3 days before Halloween, and everytime I mentioned needing to get some, Trevor really didn't complain any more than just a little eye rolling.

I would definitely say we had more fun making our jack-o-lanterns than any before. Brody of course got into it. He made the choices for what mom should draw as our 'pattern' on his and Ry's pumpkins. For Ryder, this was the time of his life. Last year he was so little that he just sat in his bumbo on top of the table and watched, but this year he got to get down and dirty in all the pumpkin guts. And boy did he!

When Brody was this age (and even now) he really didn't want anything to do with the guts. He liked taking the tools and poking them into the skin of the pumpkin and he would scoop out some guts, but touching them? Heck no. Too gross.

Ryder thought the guts were the best part. Evertime we threw some into the big bowl on the floor he would use the scoop to pull them back out. He even took it upon himself to taste test the pumpkin. More than once. More times than we could count really.

We stripped down the boys to just their jammie pants but quickly realized that was a mistake. We should have just had them naked. Especially Ry. He was covered. We were smart enough to just sit on the kitchen floor and the mess was easily mopped up afterwards, but my gosh....it was SUCH a mess! It got so bad that Ryder would nearly do the splits everytime he tried to stand up. So nasty!
When everything was all said and done, we all had a great time. The pumpkins were not perfect, definitely done by ameteurs, but cute anyway. Trevor's pumpkin said Trick or Treat (for like the 3rd year in a row), I called mine a Dracu-lantern, Brody had said he wanted his to "have eyes wike me, and a mouf wike me, and a nose wike me..." so his got a cute little face to match his cute little face, and Brody wanted Ryder's pumpkin to have a bat so a bat is what he got. And the only challenge after the clean-up, was keeping Ryder from touching the lit candles inside the pumpkins.
After our jack-o-lantern adventures on Sunday, it was on to trick-or-treating Monday!

The Newest Addition

But no, its not the one you are thinking. There would be no baby plans in our near future. But our living room got a new addition. One that Trevor has been practically drooling for ever since we got married 6 years ago. You see, we received a really nice (but not flat screen) new tv as a wedding gift. In my opinion, even larger than necessary. I guess that comes from the female perspective. Trevor and his wishful electronic thinking.....would say other wise.

(before pic, with the tv we loaned from fam until we got a new one)

Over the years as the prices of flat screen televisons have become more reasonable we've debated getting one, but we just really couldn't justify it when we had a perfectly good tv at home. We kept saying well, if our breaks.....

Wouldn't you know that it did. With a sly grin on his face Trevor said, "shoot. guess we'll have to get a new one." We did look into just repairing ours. Its like a relic. A dinosaur. No really....the cost of fixing it wasn't worth it. So guess who's flat screen dreams came true? Yep. Trevor's.

I always have had a stiputation that if we got a new tv that I would get a new entertainment center. We looked. EX-PEN-SIVE. Even at wal-mart! I don't know if its the couponer in me or what, but I just couldn't bring myself to buying one.

Then I remembered my mom had this old hideous and heavy dresser in storage. I asked her if I could have it. Trevor just could NOT see my vision for the avocado oil base painted dresser. He thought it would look dumb. But with his elbow grease and some serious paint stripper we got down to business.

After that I painted the whole thing a flat greenish-brown. Once it dried I worked in sections putting on a thick layer of elmer's glue. When that got a little tacky I did a coat of satin dark red. When it dried the elmer's glue had the same affect that crackle medium would but for a FRACTION of the cost (thank you pinterest for the idea).

When my new entertainment center was in place, with the tv, and things hanging on the wall again, I just sat back to REALLY look. The change took some getting used to, but I really think it turned out great. Even my skeptic (Trevor) liked it!