a turkey for me and a turkey for you...

Yep, it's my Thanksgiving post. Sure it's almost a month after the fact, but better late than never right? This year we were super excited to have Jared and Lindsay and crew join us down here in Utah for a whole week's worth of family time! It was so much fun. We spent every day hanging out, eating, talking, playing, or watching movies. We even took some time to walk around the BYU campus, see the lights at Temple Square, saw "Rise of the Guardians", and walked around the Riverwoods looking at lights, seeing, Santa, and riding in the carriage. It was a great week. The kids were on a cousin high the entire week, and I know Q had a hard time adjusting back to our boring life. As for Thanksgiving day, we had a great homecooked meal and had some fun playing some Thanksgiving themed games with the kids.

We took the kids to the park one day to get some wiggles out, and Jared got them all into a soccer game..it was hilarious.

One night we went and had an early dinner at Tucano's, and planned to walk around the Riverwoods area afterward...then the kids spotted Santa, and their reaction was absolutely classic. They were so excited. Oh I love Christmas joy.

Q wrote to tell Santa she wanted a rock polisher, although she has since changed her mind, so we have to tell Santa. haha

I love the Santa at the Riverwoods. His cozy setup and lack of annoying helper elves, makes for a nice experience. 

Jared and Lindsay wanted to show their kids the BYU campus, so we all headed up their one day to take a look around. I realized, as we walked around campus, that I had no recollection of where any of my classes were...i guess those years were a blur. haha

Of course, if you come to Utah during the Christmas season you have to hit up Temple Square and check out the lights. Q LOVES christmas lights, so it was going to be a fun night. Kim and I remembered Cali and Ashley talking about the church history museum and the cool interactive stuff for the kids, so we decided to hit that up while we were up there. For dinner we stopped at Kneaders at the City Creek mall...yummm...raspberry bread pudding. 

Instead of Gingerbread (or graham cracker) houses, we choose to decorate "christmas trees" (Pinterest idea). I tried baking the cake inside like it said, but that didn't work out, so we just let the kids go to town on the sugar cones. I think they had fun! 

For Thanksgiving we had a delicious spread of the usual turkey, ham, potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, homemade rolls, and stuffing. I prefer to eat it in sandwich form...in fact I quite enjoy thanksgiving day meals more the day after. I thought about making Grandpa Earl's pomegranate salad, but one year our family was in charge of pitting all the pomegranate's and I knew what a pain it was...I didn't have the drive to do it again. 

Kim, Lindsay, Kaiya, and I colored these plasticware holders for the table...cute right?

and of course, family time isn't complete without treats! I found a couple easy recipes on pinterest that I wanted to try, and having family around gave me the perfect opportunity. 

Thanksgiving morning I made these easy monkey fingers, out of grand biscuit dough, butter, cinnamon, sugar, and sweetened condensed milk

the kids loved these little "acorns" made from kisses and mini nilla wafers

I made a chocolate pudding pie, layered with cinnamon graham crackers, graham cracker crust, and chocolate shavings on top....delicious!

It was a great week!

a dream is wish your heart makes..

Kim and I have started a little tradition of taking the girls to the "Disney on Ice" show when it comes into town. It makes us all happy! This year we stopped at a Mcdonald's with a playplace before hand and had some dinner with the girls and let them run around a bit, then we headed up to Salt Lake for the show.

The show may be super cheesy in parts, but it's just so fun to watch. We heart Disney! 

Baby it's cold outside

In just a little over a month we have gone from this

to this

to this

And all I want to do is stay inside where it's warm and cozy. 

We haven't done much, and thus i have nothing to really blog about, but since this is the longest I have ever journaled in my entire life I thought I should record the boring times as well as the big events. 

I did do a couple little craft items to mix in with "fall" stuff for my Thanksgiving shelves. I love being festive. Can't wait for christmas!

love the burlap

this pilgrim was a lot of work but he looks cute on my shelf

Q and I have gone head to head in a couple battles over eating. Sometimes she is just way to stubborn and won't eat. Even if she determines what i make her for every meal. It's insane. She can eat sooooooooo slow sometimes, and then just decides that she is done after like 3 bites. Not okay. On this particular occasion it took her 3 hours to eat 3 triangles from a small personal size cheese pizza. It was a real battle of wits.

The other day Q and I got to spend some quality time eating and laughing with family. It was soooo fun. Q left me pretty quickly to spend her time with Cali. She was so excited to see Cali and Kylie, since she has missed them "so much" since they babysat her when I was in Toronto. Gotta love family.

Later that night Q and i headed over to Cali's to hang out with her girls and Baby Willie while the rest of the family went to the BYU game. Q was beyond thrilled to see baby willie and play. I basically relaxed while Carolina and Grace took such good care of Q. Plus Q and I got some good cuddle time in with Willie. 

Today we hit up the library to pick up a couple things, and Q couldn't stop posing in the windowsill...it was cracking me up!

And that catches us up!

Next week is Thanksgiving and I am super excited!

The freaks come out at night.

Oh I do love Halloween. True, I don't dress up like I used to, but I love seeing all the costumes around me, and I love getting Q all dressed up. It's just so fun. Q had changed her mind about 5 times as to what she wanted to be for Halloween, but when Elsie decided she was going to be a witch, then Q decided she was definitely going to be a witch as well. Kim and I had bought some $2.50 hats from the bins at Target to use as Halloween decorations, and the girls became convinced that we would wear them on Halloween and be witches as well.  Fine by me!!!  

Q got to dress up for school, and she pretty excited. I knew I was going to do some make up for her costume at night, but didn't trust her not mess up the makeup while at school so she decided to wear some glasses instead....it was just as cute. The kids exchanged candy at school, and they even "trick or treated" some of the businesses near her school. I had gotten there a little early so I got to watch from my car as all the cute little preschoolers walked around in their cute outfits.  love it. 

That afternoon we headed down to kim and aaron's to get some play time in before dinner and trick or treating. Then while Kim and Aaron worked on their pumpkins

I worked on the girls makeup....they thought they were pretty cool (Although Q kept rubbing her lips together, and thus looked like a crazy person with her lipstick filling up half her face). 

notice the crazy lipstick

We walked around their neighborhood, and the girls were so good.

One of their favorites house of the night..seeing Snow White was a real treat

Q was in heaven, and wanted to hit every house. Q's bag was getting kind of heavy, but she refused to let me help her carry it...I think perhaps she was worried I would take her candy haha. 

Halfway thru Aaron went home to hand out candy while we finished up in the neighborhood, then we went home and the girls took turns opening the door, and handing out candy while the adults hung out and talked....it was perfect!  

Q loves herself a party, and was on Halloween overload when I told her it was time to go, so we had a major meltdown with her. She hasn't had one of those in a long time. She was a crazy person. When I got her in the car she informed me that she couldn't stop crying because her heart was crying and sad. (it was so cute). I asked her what she needed for her heart to get happy, and she informed me that  silly picture would make her heart stop crying. Unfortunately, I was driving and couldn't find a "silly picture" on my phone to help her heart. But a little quiet time, and some time to be sad did the trick, and by the time we got home she was calm and ready for bed.  

Today she didn't want to get up, even after 12 hours of sleep, and I finally had to get her up at 9:15 so she could get ready for her hula class. She was so dazed during the class, it was kind of pathetic. 

But life is back to normal now. Halloween decor is down, and November is here.