It doesn’t seem right to blog about Christmas when I haven’t written about Thanksgiving, so here is some back blogging about the holiday season!
For the month of November I hung a tree on our front door for people to write things they are thankful for. The kids had a great time and as you can see our Thankful Tree became quite full. It is always fun to see what the kids are thankful for and even more fun to see that Marion wrote the most different items on the tree. Here are some samples”
Oliver – legos, mom
Elora – fire to keep the house warm, mom, dad, Marion, Oliver, James, food
Marion – Octopus, Mom, Elephants, apple hat, cucumbers
Chris wanted baguettes this year so I made some, but I still made rolls because this is the one day of the year that I make rolls and I LOVE them.
We had quite the gathering this year. Chris’ brother David brought his family and both Chris’ and my parents came too. Here is Marion smiling like an octopus with her cousin Casey. Casey played play-dough with Marion, making her quite the favorite.
We have a sous vide that we use to cook our meat. We usually put it in a pan to use it, but due to the large quantities of meat this year we had to cook everything in a cooler.
David checking out the sous vide turkey. It was seriously the best turkey I have ever had in my life.
Here is the kids’ table! Marion is smiling like an octopus again. We had a few unusual items this year due to the fact that Oliver doesn’t like anything in a traditional thanksgiving meal. He was more pleased about the sauteed spinach than anything else on the table, while Marion enjoyed the wild rice the best. We called it “special rice” so she would try it and then when she was yelling, “I want more special rice!” I wasn’t sure what she was talking about!
Good thing we have a bigger table than we used to! There was still food everywhere. It was all so good, but even one small portion of everything completely filled my plate. So many yummy things to try.
Grampy and Casey zonked out after our big meal.
Next it was time for playing paintball. Chris took the kids last year and David’s girls were really excited to play again. Oliver was also very pleased to play (since we have rules that all the yellow jerseys can’t get shot).
David had to dress Grampy so he could come play too.
Our paintballing crew!
Chris is always on the team with the little ones who can’t be shot at while the other grown ups and big kids get to try and shoot Chris.
Grampy trying not to get shot!
David made Casey an easy target for her sisters. Luckily all the little girls are too nice to take too much advantage of the situation.
Oliver looks so cute and small.
Marion wanted a mask to wear too. She was very excited to go with Daddy.
That’s a whole lot of cars at our house! It was fun to have so much family with us for the holidays. We love having visitors out here in the sticks!
We headed up to Brian Head that evening and spent Friday skiing and sledding. So fun! We of course forgot our camera, but we had a great time. The kids enjoyed the indoor pool at their grandparents hotel and having cousins spend the night with them at the “an apartment”.
