Thanksgiving Break

We had an awesome Thanksgiving break this year. We went to Houston, Texas where my family lives to celebrate the holiday, and also the return of my brother, Jordan, from his mission to Zurich, Switzerland. My whole family was there, as well as my grandparents Granny and Poppa, from Idaho. What a fun time we had - all 15 of us! Some highlights:

- It was a surprise for us all to be there to pick up my brother from the aiport. He walked out and said, "Wow! The WHOLE family..." :) It was so nice to hear all his stories and see about 600 of his 1200 pictures he took there! Talk about a beautiful place to live!
- Merrick, my dad, and Poppa went to the NASA Space Center (as in "Houston, we have a problem.") They had a wonderful time seeing all there was to see.
- We ate our Thanksgiving meal on Saturday so that Jordan didn't miss out. Yummy food!
- My nephew Stephen brought four lightsabers and the four kids had
a blast with those.
- The weather in Texas was mild, but definitely warmer than the chilly 30 degrees we came home to! It was really pleasant to be able to walk down to the park without coats on!
- Jordan gave his homecoming talk on Sunday so that we could all be there. My younger sister Katie also received her Young Womanhood Medallion that day.
- We all went to see the movie The Blind Side. It was really a great movie. I highly recommend it.
- Granny had a broken foot and was only wearing one shoe most of the time. It really bugged Camryn. She kept pointing at the bare foot saying "Uh-oh, shoe!" all the time. It really cracked us up.
- We celebrated my sister Ashley's birthday on Monday night before we all left.
- LOTS of food, lots of visiting, lots of fun!

I don't have any pictures yet but I'll share some when I get them! I'm grateful for my family and that we could all be together. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving too.

Dress Up

Today I thought I'd attempt taking some shots of my kids in some Christmas dresses. I realized (again) that I need professional help. It's really hard to capture cuteness! Especially when it's reluctant to say "cheese" fifty times in a row and can't sit still at ALL! I guess I'll have to take the plunge and pay someone to take pictures that are worthy to post on my wall. For now, these are perhaps worthy to post on my blog...

A is for Avery the Artist!

Avery is very talented at drawing. She loves to draw and probably spends a couple hours a day coloring. I like to buy her blank notebooks instead of coloring books sometimes because she can get more creative this way. She's really into drawing faces and I'll give her tips and she really sticks to them. Like eyelashes - she's on a big eyelashes kick right now. I took a few pictures out of her current notebook to show where she's at right now. She's good - you'll see:
This one's a little more disturbing. Maybe she was really tired when she drew this one?
BTW, most of her people are princesses with crowns on their head. Sometimes they'll have earrings and necklaces.

This one reminded us of a SpongeBob head, but she insisted it was a Princess Avery:

Here's a "sad Avery" picture. Yes, those are tears.

And finally, her other talent involving her fine motor skills: Writing. Here's the card we wrote out for Merrick's birthday. I told her which letters to write and she wrote them all by herself. We didn't have room for the "a" in birthday. And the "Avery" ended up on the other side of the card, in a lighter color. But still, pretty impressive! She can write most of the alphabet now and can write several short words and names on her own without my help!

Lightning McSpendy

Merrick had a birthday last week. Avery decided/insisted to have a "Cars" theme. No, he did not get a car for a present!! On his crown I wrote "Lightning McSpendy" because at work they call him McSpendy. He liked that a lot - especially because he gets made fun of for walking really fast (like lightning, get it?). Here are a few pics of our party:

The tradition of making birthday crowns continues...

What a cute little partier!!! Camryn really got into the party idea, and even learned the word "cake" for the occasion.
Avery and Camryn had to wait all day for Dad to open his presents. But they exhibited surprising restraint and did not rip anything open! Good girls!

The "cake", which was really an ice cream pie. My improvised version of a Mississippi Mud Pie recipe I found. Oreo crust, a layer of chocolate and toasted almonds, oreo ice cream, and another layer of chocolate and toasted almonds. YUM!

Halloween.

Halloween started for us a week early this year with our Ward Halloween Party. Avery was a princess again and Camryn was a ladybug (although she didn't keep her costume on long!) I thought it was a good idea that they had coloring sheets and crayons on the tables for the kids during dinner. Then they had activities like face painting, a Halloween craft, and a table full of playdoh. Here's Camryn trying to get in on the playdoh:
After the activities, they had families each decorate and man a door around the building and the kids did trick-or-treating. One group had a spooky room all set up and it was so crowded I sent Avery in. I thought Merrick was helping her but he came out without her and she had been loading up on the candy for a while! Too bad it was mostly Laffy Taffy. :/ We had a fun time at the party and it was great to see all our friends dressed up. My Chipotle Chocolate Chili I made in the chili cook-off was a hit!
The next day Merrick came down with the flu. Within a few days we all had it. Probably H1N1 although we never got officially diagnosed. It was no fun, and we're still recovering. The biggest bummer was that we didn't get to go trick-or-treating. It was a cold night and Avery actually got a 24 hr case of croup on top of the flu so she just couldn't go out. I still dressed up the sickies in their costumes and we did some mock trick-or-treating with them. Oh and I did take Avery to our duplex neighbor's door and she loaded us up, so that was nice. She actually was a good sport and didn't get too disappointed, although I was let down after having told her three trick-or-treat stories every night for the past month to get her ready!

Yesterday Avery started talking about NEXT Halloween already and what she wanted to be - a cat or a witch. So I decided to get it over with so we can move on. I made her hair into some cat ears and drew whiskers on her face. She was positively delighted. I also made her a witch hat out of construction paper, cardboard, and staples and she rode around on my kitchen broom for a while.

We're all starting to feel better now and I'm secretly glad/sad that we don't have a mountain of candy to eat! Hope your Halloween was fun!