Gingerbread house competition

The first weekend in Dec I found there was a gingerbread decorating competition. It looked like a lot of fun so when we got up and around we headed downtown. To get in you just had to bring a canned food item or a hygiene item for donation. 

When we looked at the details there were 3 groups, the professional, amateur, and kid group. Since we had gotten there later in the morning many were still working on them but you could see what it was they were making. The kids really had a lot of fun looking at all the different things people were making. 

The amateur group had the most entry's and I was pretty impressed on some of the ones I seen. Olivia loved all the Frozen ones a few people had made. 

Of course the professional ones had a lot of detail and really thought outside the box. 

These two pictures are of the professional ones. At each table there was a container that you could "vote" for your favorite. Since this was all for charity all the money collected was donated. The one with most money won their category. 

We gave all the kids a dollar so they could vote for their favorite on. Thomas and Sup both voted for the Star Wars one. Eric and I liked the pirate ships, which I found out later won the professional group. 

It was a really fun morning and inspired the boys into wanting to try their hand at making a gingerbread house. After we finished up at the gingerbread houses we headed over to Aizzpizza. This is a new pizza place that has opened up here. I had heard good things about it from some of the girls at work so we decided to give it a try. It is best described to me as like subway but it pizza instead of sandwiches. We were all able to have our own pizza the way we wanted and it was fresh and hot.   

sushi night

This year Eric and I wanted to have a fun night while we still had family down. We thought we would have more of an "interactive" dinner. Eric and I thought it would be fun to have a sushi night and since we didn't really have a lot of the stuff to make it his sister was willing to share her things with us. 

We had gone to the store before Thanksgiving and picked out all the stuff we thought would be good to stuff in the sushi rolls. It was fun to see what every one picked and I think we were able to have a pretty good selection of all types of sushi rolls. 

Even though our boys were not as excited to eat the rolls they did try the ones they made. I think for the most part we all had a fun time with it. We did have crepes earlier on in the week that we did dessert sushi rolls as well : )

Thanksgiving 2016

Thanksgiving is always such a fun time for our family. For the past several years Eric's sister and her family come down and spend the long weekend with us. We have a little bit of a system worked out that we really don't have to plan too much at this point ; )

 I always like to try new things and recipes and it so nice when others are willing to try : ) On Thanksgiving we always have appetizers and then our big turkey dinner late afternoonish. Since all our kids are getting older we all tried to help with something for the meal and/or the appetizers. 

I think it is safe to say all the kids had fun helping with the food. Everything went off without any issues and we had a fun and very yummy meal. It is fun to see all our kids have fun and grow from year to year and have some fun traditions and memories to share with each other. We are grateful that we are able to spend this holiday together!

I am thankful for...

What is nice about the location of my job it is not too far to get to the school the boys attend. For Thanksgiving, Thomas's teacher invited all the parents to attend a reading by the kids who wrote what they were thankful for. 

I was able to take my lunch break and head up to the school to see Thomas. At first he wasn't going to read it paper, but I gave him a little bit of a guilt trip and he changed his mind and read it for me ; ) He was one of the last ones because he was not going to originally read it. After hearing some of the other kids I who were thankful for their family, God, food, and all the things you would hope to hear I was hoping Thomas would be along those lines as well…. He was not. He was thankful for his Xbox, Halo and Legos…. It seems I still have some work to do ; )

Raking leaves

Depending how the year and the weather our leaves may fall before or after Halloween. This year they started to fall a little bit into November. 

We have a huge maple tree in our front yard that I will say I love most times out of the year. In the fall it drops A LOT of leaves and in the spring we have to deal with all the annoying helicopters. As we have grown up in our house the falling leaves have actually become fun of the kids.

Like most other kids the joy of raking the leaves into a huge pile and having someone either throw you in i.e. Daddy in their case or jumping in can entertain and have a lot of fun for a long while. This year Olivia was able to join in on the fun. She is a little more of a girly girl so she was not too interested in being in the leaves. Her fun came with putting on the tutu and dancing around the pile ; )

With the boys getting older we are also starting to put them to work a little more. With this job at least we didn't have any complaining, which is a big plus in my book ; ) As they get older and the joy of the leaves become more of a chore then fun I am sure it will change. But at least for the time being it is still fun!

Post Halloween dinner

Even with Halloween being on a Saturday this year, we were bust finishing up costumes, I didn't have a chance to make our special Halloween themed meal. 

 Making themed meal is something I really like to do so I didn't want to skip out on it, so I decided to just make it for our Sunday dinner the next day. 

 We always have the mummy hot dogs so that was a given. The side or the other items I like to see what other fun things I can try and make. This year we went with the vegetable skeleton, witch finger breadsticks and a pumpkin cheese ball. 

For dessert we made grave yard pudding pudding cup. Originally this was suppose to be in one big cake pan. But when you put pudding on top of cake its really hard to have an edible leftover. So I went with individual cups. This way they put as much cake on the bottom then their pudding. On top they put crushed Oreos and then topped it with a Milano cookie for the tomb stone. I also found these bone sprinkles that they could put on top. The boys had a lot of fun with these because they could make it how they wanted : )    

Halloween 2015

This year was a fun year for Halloween. The boys picked some interesting costumes and Livvy was old enough to kinda know what was going on. She also had her big brothers to show her the ropes. 

So this fall Thomas really got into the Titanic. He really likes reading the "I Survived…" books and after he read "I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic" thats all he wanted learn about. So when we asked him what he wanted to be he said the Titanic I had no idea what to do and was going to tell him to think of something else. 

Eric has a pretty creative mind and said he would be able to make it for him and had an idea. He and Thomas made the boat out of cardboard. It took a few weeks to make and paint, but it turned out really nice! Thomas was pretty impressed and so was everyone else! Phillip was pretty funny he wanted to be the boo berry ghost. Yes the cereal that comes out every Halloween. So I went with a blue fabric and actually found this fun little hat at the party store. Olivia I went with a little witch costume. It was fun to make a little girls costume : ) I was able to find a witch hat headband, which was perfect for her! 

Thomas by far got the most comments when we were out trick or treating. There were a lot of people who had their spouse come to the door just to see. He did have some trouble getting around tight spots but for the most part he was pretty proud of all the comments he got. I would have been fun to enroll him in a costume contest ; )

It was so nice to have Daddy come a long this year! We were out for a couple of hours and all the kids made out really well. Livvy was a pro after the first house and realized she got candy after knocking at the door. She really didn't need any assistance at all and was not all a bit shy to go up to the door. She loved it when they thought she was just so cute and let her take 2 handfuls of candy instead of one ; )