Thanksgiving 2011

We celebrated Thanksgiving at home again this year.  This late in pregnancy, traveling 20+ hours in a car was not really feasible, and saving Brad's vacay time for the birth is top priority!  This year we were able to host 3 other families at our house - The Hamptons, The Daltons, and The Whitakers ... it turned out to be so much fun!  Here's the table... hard to see in the pic but my "fancy" table runner is a long strip of burlap, and the napkins are tied with twine.  It was nice to have an excuse to unpack the nice dishes I've had in boxes since we left AZ 31/2 years ago.

The boys were so excited about the day that they were bouncing off the walls.  Brad settled down to read with them to keep them from tearing up the house. 

 Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of everyone together, but I at least got all the kids!  We had four 4-5 year olds, three 2-3 year olds, and 3 babies 6-9 months.  It was the perfect party!  Thankfully we had a break from the cold and the weather was GORGEOUS.  The kids spent a couple hours between dinner and dessert playing outside.  We had SO MUCH good food and the best part was that I didn't have to do much cooking at all thanks to our talented guests =). 

 I at least remembered to have someone snap a picture of the four of us before everyone was gone.  And there must be some magic trick to this photo - you can hardly see my belly, but believe me it is HUGE.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 

Walkabout Acres

This summer a friend and I from the ward helped organize a Fieldtrip Friday playgroup for the ward and any other friends who wanted to join in. Our first trip was to Walkabout Acres, a small family run bee farm. They sell honey products, including honey icecream, and have a few other farm animals as well. It was a fun day!

Oliver is the boy in red who is holding Owen's hand. We have had a separate playgroup at his house every Weds for the past year... he and his family just moved to Indiana though. We will miss them!


Ok, so family and high school friends who have known me a long time... doesn't this farm cat look JUST LIKE my cat Brighty???? She lived to be 22+ years old and only recently passed away. I have never ever seen another cat that looked like her... until now.

And this was not on the farm, but here is a shot of the Weds playgroup I was talking about. I call it my "crunchy hippy mama playgroup." We're the sort that like to wrap and cloth diaper babies, and exchange gentle parenting tips and in general just support each other and have a good time! We're trying to keep it going even though our group's original hostess and our dear friend has moved away. We all just sort of found each other in various random ways, and our friendships were meant to be!

Dinosaur Park and Riverton

During our second week in Utah, after Owen started feeling a little better, we met up with some friends at the Dinosaur Park in Ogden. You might recognize these friends from many of my blog posts while we lived in Pittsfield - they moved there about the same time as we did and their son Stew was Eli's bestest friend while we were out there. Amy was such a blessing to me as well while we lived there... her daughter was born there just one month after Owen. We spent many a wintery day at one or the other's house just nursing our babies and letting the big brothers play until they were exhausted. We also went on a sleigh ride in Vermont, and walked on a frozen lake together! Through a serious of unexpected events they actually ended up moving back to Utah before we even left MA... so we haven't seen them in an entire year! It was so fun to meet up at the Dino park - the perfect place for all 3 of our Dino crazy boys! Stew even wore the same shirt as Eli and Owen (unplanned), and since it was raining, we had the ENTIRE place to ourselves!

Outside we got to see dinosaur replicas and listen to "roaring" sounds coming from the bushes, as well as "dig" for dinosaur bones in the sand. Inside we saw real dinosaur fossils, and the electronically animated T-rex and Triceratops. The kids were all pretty scared of the moving dinos at first, but after they warmed up it was hard to tear them away. Eli STILL talks about it and constantly wants to re-create the scene saying he's the T-rex and I'm the mommy Triceratops and I have to protect my baby (Owen). Lol.







Very soon after the Dino Park (maybe the next day) we met up with the Woodwards again closer to their home - at IKEA! Eli and Stew played in the children's area while Amy and I did some shopping. Then we went over to their house for lunch and got to see some of the neat animals they have there. They are living with Amy's parents while her husband finishes up some schooling, and the home and land out there in Riverton is gorgeous! You can see the new Draper Temple across the valley from their backyard. The kids were ecstatic to be able to feed the ducks, see a real horse, and a beehive! It was a wonderful day! We sure appreciated being cheered up after that long drawn out yucky sickness.... and we remembered again how much we love and miss our Woodward friends... I hope we can reconnect more often!

Naked Bats

The week before last I watched a friend's little girl during the day while she was out of town. After using the potty one afternoon, Eli did not want to put his pants back on. Trying to reason with him I said, "We don't walk around naked in front of our friends... that's embarrassing." Eli responded, "Bat's fly around naked - that's embarrassing too!" I busted up laughing. I have no idea where that came from, but he agreed to put his pants back on before leaving the bathroom.

Here are a few pictures from their adventures. Eli and Ivy got along surprisingly well... alternating between boy and girl games.

Hiding from "Sharks"

Playing Butterflies

Ocean in the Tub

Pretty Princesses

Princess Cake aka. Poptarts

Sailing to the Promised Land

Watching Curious George with their Babies

More Princess Cake

Dress up... Again

Ok, so it looks like girl games won out the majority of the time, but Eli and Owen didn't seem to mind! Ivy looks like she could be related to us, so I had fun pretending to have three kids. I think these boys could use a sister... what do you think?