Thanksgiving 2015

What a great Thanksgiving we had this year!  I was lucky enough to be able to be the hostess.  David's siblings that live in Idaho all had plans to go elsewhere this year, so his parents were free to drive down to Utah to celebrate with us!

I'm serious when I say that hosting Thanksgiving is a dream for me.  I've been reading Martha Stewart Living and Better Homes and Gardens, and collecting dishes and cooking utensils since I was in high school!  I love it! (but I was still embarrassed when we were discussing possible plans with David's parents and he piped up with, "Kelley REALLY wants to host! REALLY bad!!!" - Like anyone can offer other alternatives after THAT!)  Anyway, once everyone decided to let me play hostess, I went to work.  I can hardly call it work, because I love doing it, but I wrote lists and brainstormed ideas, and poured over magazines, and went shopping, and power cleaned the house, etc.  I may or may not have had a few sleepless nights planning all the festivities, but I enjoyed the whole thing.

The kids were home from school on the day before Thanksgiving, so I put them to work getting ready for our guests.  They cleaned and cooked and decorated.  They were very helpful - isn't it wonderful to have kids that are old enough to be helpful?!?!?  I never thought I'd see the day... They worked hard while I directed their efforts.  I promise, I wasn't quite like this video, but it still cracks me up!  You don't have to watch the whole thing - you'll get the idea in the first 30 seconds or so:

https://youtu.be/GBwELzvnrQg

I "worked" (aka "played") the whole day.  My parents dropped by in the afternoon, lending me some chairs, decorations, and other stuff.  I was not into cooking dinner that night, so we had McDonald's grub.  In the evening, David's parents came over to visit.  We were glad they arrived safely because a huge snow storm hit us right as they were coming.  They watched a movie with Dave and the girls while I worked and watched from the kitchen.  Then we all headed off to bed.

On Thanksgiving morning, we got up, ate breakfast, read our scriptures, and got to work.  Everyone helped and it went very smoothly.  We were ready for company when they started arriving.  Grandma and Grandpa got here first, around 10:00 or 10:30.  Aunt Linda and David's cousin, Kevin arrived about an hour or so after them.  We visited and watched football.  We had a buffet set up with lots of snacks and appetizers for people to enjoy while they waited for dinner.  Grandma Gee was so nice - she's always good about verbally expressing appreciation, praise, and love. Sometimes, we all just want someone to say something nice to us, and she does that.  I wish I was more like her!  Sorry, I digress.  When she saw the snack buffet, she said, :Whoa!  I think we just took our Thanksgivings to a whole new level!"  That's the kind of thing you dream about someone saying about your party.  It made me happy!

I forgot to take a picture of the buffet until after it was almost empty, and gross looking.  We had crackers with cheese, meats, and mustard, fudge, Chex mix, nuts, chocolate covered almonds, and autumn colored M&Ms.

One of our pretty tables.

Jodi's family arrived around 1:00.  Shortly thereafter, we ate!  We ate on three different tables in three different rooms, but I think it worked okay. Everyone seemed happy with their table partners.

Instead of having one large turkey, we had two smaller ones.  More drumsticks for the kiddos!

You can't even SEE all the yummy stuff we ate in these pictures!  

There was a lot of food!  In fact, after everyone was done eating, you could hardly tell that it had been touched!  Can you say, leftovers?!?!?

While we digested, we did a couple of activities:

Everyone wrote the things they were thankful for on this poster.  It was much more full by the end of the day.  I loved listening to Jodi's little girls ask each other how to spell things so they could write them on the board.

This picture didn't turn out because I tried to zoom in on it from another picture.  It was a heart made from the thumbprints of  each of the children there.  Each child had their own color of ink.  It was cuter in real life - just trust me on this one.

All the kids were given an orange, toothpicks, and candy and asked to create a work of art.

I think they loved it!  They each wanted to take a picture of themselves with their masterpieces:

Don't worry! We had pie.  And home made ice cream.

A couple of apple pies, a couple of pumpkin, a couple of chocolate (thanks, Jodi!) and one lemon cream. I think I sent three whole, uncut pies home with the family.  

After visiting, watching TV, and packing up leftovers for everyone, we said goodbye. Kevin went home to Provo, but the whole rest of the gang headed up to Idaho for the weekend.  They had some driving to do, so they were gone pretty early.  That gave us time to clean up, relax, put the boys to bed, then hit a store - for no reason in particular other than that the girls wanted to see what the crazy Black-Friday-That-Is-Now-Black-Thursday-Night thing is all about.  We didn't go right as it started, so things were pretty mellow, but now they know what it's like.  It was actually a very fun end to a very fun day for us.

The poet strikes again

Turkey chases me around

Throw myself onto the ground

Climb onto the old tractor

Glaring darts at my attacker

Later...

Thanksgiving time, I get my revenge,

On the turkey who scared myself and friends,

Grease on my chin, fork in my hand

Beware of me, turkeys! You will be canned!

Written in honor of the turkey who used to chase me around,

                                         --Alison Gee (age 12)

Go Utes!

I am a contest enter-er.  It's what I do.  Sometimes, it actually pays off.  Not often, but sometimes.

In November, I won a contest from Channel 2 News.  The prize was 2 tickets to the U of U vs. UCLA football game. Cool, huh!  The only problem was that I couldn't go.  At least, I felt like it would be a bad idea for David and I to leave our kids for 6 or so hours in the middle of a Saturday.  So, I sent Joshua in my place.

He was so excited!  I got him all decked out in red, packed him up with gloves, hats, blankets, etc. and sent him off with Dad. They got there in plenty of time to take a picture, then go get a hot dog, hot chocolate, and cotton candy.

David called me at halftime.  He wasn't sure if he could make it through the whole game.  Not because Josh was cold (it was very, very cold) or bored, but because he was driving Dave crazy!  I guess the cotton candy went straight to Josh's brain.  He was bouncing up and down, throwing his blanket in the air, kicking the chair in front of him, etc.  Crazy kid.

Somehow, David managed to make it through the whole game.  Utah lost.  Bummer.  When they got home, Josh was happily chattering away about his special day with Dad.  His favorite part was the wave going through the crowd, and the food, of course.  He was totally oblivious to the fact that Dad was exhausted and stressed out. David said it was the equivalent of a six hour plane ride with a sugar crazed seven year old.  I guess that's pretty much how life goes sometimes.  As long as the kids have happy memories, they don't have to know how hard it was for their parents to make them, right? This experience has made me re-evaluate several of my favorite childhood memories. If I had just turned around would I have found my parents collapsed on the ground?

Count To Ten And Find The Camera

Quinton is such a naughty little toddler right now.  This is one phase of life I'll be happy to say goodbye to once our last child grows out of it.

When he was a newborn, I had high hopes that he would be a gentle soul.  I figured since I already had Josh and Bron I deserved a break.  The older boys could be my Laman and Lemual and Quin could be my Nephi - he was already large in stature!  :)  No luck, though.  Since he's not even two years old yet and he already thinks body gas sounds are hilarious, I guess I'm gonna raise another hellion.  Luckily for him, I've discovered that if I take a picture of his shenanigans, I calm down quite a bit in the process.  It's my version of counting to ten.

One morning, I noticed that it was too quiet.  I found him like this.  He'd pulled a stool over to the counter (he loves to drag stools all over the house)...

and eaten part of several different pieces of fruit.  He went through a phase with this - we were all eating left-over pieces of apples for a week or two.

Books are apparently offensive to Quinton when they are on shelves.  He much prefers them on the floor,

He slipped away during family scripture study one morning to whip up some scrambled eggs.

Q is such a cute little bundle of trouble, isn't he?  Plan on seeing many more of these types of pictures in the near future.

Random Autumn Events

Boy! Do I have some catching up to do?!?!?  Here comes a marathon post catching up on some of our fun autumn events:

Nicole loves to spend her Sunday nights baking.  Here is the first cake she ever frosted on her own.  

She also loves to play "restaurant" with the boys.  She takes their orders, then makes them look spectacular on their plates.  She's got skills!

One night, the girls and I attended a special art celebration with Grandpa and Grandma Smith. It was very well done.  They had professional story tellers, art instruction, an artist working on a painting while we watched,  beautiful local art on display, awards, and even a live visit from Rembrandt and Picasso!  

Alison, Megan and I went to Lagoon with my parents during Frightmares. The most frightening thing for me was going on the new, gigantic roller coaster - the Cannibal.    I was freaked out!  I'm not sure if it's really reverent or not, but I was literally praying as it started.  Once we got going, though, it was a blast!  We went on it twice!

Here we're on that huge Ferris wheel (one of the only things my parents will go on!).

Then, just because we're crazy, we went on the Sky Coaster.  You know, the bungee-chord-swing thing?  Here we are getting in our harnesses.  

It really was so much fun (the fourth time I've done it in my life), but I have to admit, I was pretty freaked out.  The worst part of it for me was that we were all lined up at our feet level, so when we were going up backwards, I felt like the girls were both behind me or something.  It was very uncomfortable to feel like I was a foot closer to the ground than anyone else.   

A few more Lagoon pictures

For your viewing pleasure

Couple of thugs.

Nicole's activity days group put on a fun daddy-daughter-date.  It was candy-land themed.  They worked hard making adorable decorations, games, etc.  Nicki's leaders told me how impressed they were with her art skills.  The date was super fun.

Look how cute that is!

One of Alison's favorite shows in the world is Studio C.  It's a comedy sketch show from Provo. Well, in October, Mallory from Studio C came to our stake to speak at Standard's Night.  Alison was beside herself.  I think she idolizes Mallory a little bit.  Which is why I was so very pleased to  see that Mallory, while still funny and entertaining, has a good head on her shoulders and a love of the scriptures.  Her talk was very nice, and mellow, even spiritual.  Afterwards, she took answers from the audience.  Of course, Alison raised her hand and got to ask her one.

Then, when it was over, Mallory stayed for who-knows-how-long and took pictures with people.  This is Ali and one of her close friends, Emma with Mallory. You don't think she's excited, do you?  Mallory's face is funny because she's talking to me while I take the picture. 

And her face is funny in this picture because she wanted it to be.

On morning this fall, I took the kiddos to the Hill Air Force Base museum.  As usual, it was amazing!  As usual, I forgot my camera.  Thank heaven for Nicole and her ever-present camera!

Somehow, neither Nicki nor I got any pictures of Payton and McKenna playing at our house.  Kristin was part of a crew of nurses, etc. who were helping her hospital change like operating systems or something like that.  It was a huge deal.  She spent months training doctors in all the new stuff.  Then, in late fall, the program "went live."  When that happened, Kris had a couple of hairy, 50+ hour weeks.  During that time, I picked up her kids from school and brought them over to my house about once per week. My mom and Katie helped too (probably more than I did), and Brian had some days off in there as well.  It was very fun for us to have them here.  I sure love my family - all of them!  Payton and McKenna are good kids.  Nicki and McKenna would basically disappear and play together the while time.  Payton got chased by my boys a lot.  But he also played ball outside and computer games inside.  Brian would drive over here and pick them up when he got off work.

In Alison's foreign language class (she's taking a broad-view, test out all the languages before you chose one class) she was required to make food from three different countries.  She had a small list of reciepes that she had to choose from.  She had to make an appetizer or salad, main dish, and dessert - all from different countries. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to plan.

But it ended up being fun.  Ali worked hard in the kitchen all afternoon.

She made these cucumber cream cheese appetizers from England. 

Gnocchi marinara from Italy (green beans from Mom). 

And a Romanian apple cake.  It was all pretty delicious.  I might even make that apple cake again some time.

One night in November, Katie had a special event to attend for her work.  Scot was out of town on business, as were my parents, so Katie recruited her siblings.  She took Scott (our brother, not her husband) to the dinner with her and she asked me to babysit Adam.  I had so much fun!  I really didn't know what to expect because I haven't babysat Adam since he was a baby.

Megan was there.  She did her homework for a while, played the piano, watched a little TV, but mostly just hung out with me and helped interpret what Adam wanted.

I had such a great time hanging out with her.  She's got the most fun, laid back personality.  It was really just like hanging out with a friend.  She's very good at playing the piano too.  

I wish I had a better picture of Adam, but he was usually too close for me to get a good one anyway.  He was SO GOOD!  He sat on my lap, right up on my chest really, and put his smiley face right up to mine.  He helped me change his diaper, and ate a few snacks, took his medicine, and played with me.  He wanted me to hold him so he could touch the ceiling. (a luxury he can't have with either one of his shorty parents).  I was so glad that I got to spend that evening at Katie's house!  I know it's not always that easy, but we all felt very blessed that he had such a good night with me.