Happy Thanksgiving

Our Thanksgiving was fairly mellow this year and I was so excited to be able to have the whole holiday weekend off work! We started out our festivities a day early at my parents house on Wednesday night so that we (Jesse) could watch the Suns game with my Dad and eat some Little Caesar's pizzy together. While they cheered on the home team, I took Eli on a coupon clipping, grocery shopping adventure. The end results= saving over $100 between sales and coupons. It was such a fantastic feeling; perhaps I will have to try harder to do this more often!

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On Thanksgiving morning, Jesse got up early and played Football with a bunch of the guys from our neighborhood while I worked on cooking rolls, potatoes, and Apple Yums! We headed over to the parents house around mid-day and enjoyed yummy appetizers and then hours of delicious snacking followed by probably the best taking turkey I have ever had (no joke)

After dinner we played and then had a BUNCH of delicious pies made my Jesse's mom. Every year she makes around 7-8 pies and we all love to try each and every one of them. In years past we would always go to the movies for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but with the young kids we have had to alter this family tradition. This year we rented a movie and all sat together, bundled in blankets on the couch.

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After all our Thanksgiving fun it was off to bed for all of us. The next morning I did a little Black Friday shopping for the kids. I have to admit that last year I went all out with the shopping and this year I was just too darn tired to try that hard. I woke up around 6am and then got ready and went to a few stores. There were a few deals to be had, but for the most part I missed out on the really great stuff.

~

Friday afternoon we headed to a friend dinner with Jesse's old high school friends. It was fun to catch up with them and kind of crazy to see how many kids there are between all of us. We then ran over to Jesse's parents for one final goodbye to Uncle Adam and then "home again home again jiggity jig" for bedtime once again.

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**thanks so much for this cute picture Uncle Adam**
This year for Thanksgiving we ate our feast at Nona and Papa's house.

My cute little E modeling his new tie

Joanna, Abbs, Miss M and Esther

Uncle Adam and Robby

Nona's yummy pies
This year was kind of special Thanksgiving for all of us. Jesse's brother, Adam, came in town from Boston. The last time we saw him was last Christmas when Eli was just a few days old. It was fun to see him and watch the kids get to know him once again. Maddie and Robby were practically in LOVE with him by the end of his visit and quite enjoyed the tickling, chasing, soccer kicking, and general rough housing he provided. It makes my heart happy to see them build these relationships with their Uncle. It was also neat to see him get to know our little E as well. Too bad he was only here for a few days and in too little time off he went to Boston. Unfortunately he works Christmas, so hopefully come Spring we will see him again. We sure love him!!!!
~

All in all it was a great Thanksgiving

The Case of the Naughty Flip Flop

One day a mommy & her kids decided that for fun they would go visit a fun park with Grandma & the cousins and have a picnic. It was a beautiful fall day in Arizona, so mommy and the kids dressed in their shorts and flip flops, packed up, piled into the car and headed out. Everything was going great (other than mommy forgetting the yummy PB&J sandwiches) and everyone was having fun feeding the ducks their bread when.....

a certain little someone decided it would be MUCH more fun to feed the ducks without any flip-flops on. When the mommy tried to get this certain child to put his shoes back on, the trouble began. During an exuberant kicking action performed to stop the mother's attempt to put the flip flop in question back on, the shoe went flying.

Flying as in sailing into the duck pond flying. Flying as in far away from the mommy's reach flying. At first, the mommy thought she would teach the little child a lesson by immediately buckling him into the double stroller.

~She apparently thought wrong.

Despite the fact that is was perfect timing to stop and show the little one the consequence for chucking shoes into a dirty pond....what the mommy should have done, was dive after that darn flip flop the moment it hit the water. Because within moments of the shoe landing in the water, it took off and quickly became unreachable.

Once the mommy was done teaching the little one about consequences, she realized that the flip flop had already begun floating away. One attempt was made my mommy to "wade" out into the pond with pants rolled, but it was a total failure. Another attempt was made to reach the flip flop with a stick= another failure.

By this time the flip flop had now floated to the dead center of the pond AND was not moving. Things were looking pretty bleak and the little boy was quite distressed about continuing to sit in the stroller........

luckily enters a "hero" or two into this story. After talking with another person at the park and several phone calls later, two "park rangers" arrived to take on the challenge of dragging a little flip-flop out of the duck pond. At this point, the children became delighted to see what kind of ideas the rangers had for the fishing adventure.

Some of those fabulous ideas included:

making waves in the water,

trying to reach with a long extension pole,

the "wait and see,"

and finally one of the brave young "hero's" ventured out in the water up to his abdomen and finally fished out the beloved flip-flop with a pole :)

My how the little children were thrilled to see a grown man, wading out into murky water to collect the precious possession. They were even happier when they saw him walking around drenched in water.

At last the little boy had his shoe and could once again get out of the stroller and first eat some yummy fruit, chips, and rice krispie treat, before playing at the playground on a swing!

The End

(can you guess who the flip-flop in the story belonged to.....good thing he is sooo cute)

Kater-Bug

and a very hot and sweaty little guy

~who by the way NEVER got out of the stroller and was quite the little trouper about that one

Happy Halloween

*Updated post with some cute pictures of Eli as Squirt, the baby turtle from Finding Nemo, and Robby as a fireman....still no pictures from Jesse of Miss M as Belle.

So my camera decided to officially die as of Friday night and I have NO PICTURES of Halloween at the moment (I think/hope Jesse took a few on his i-phone~ please) Until then....this post will have to do.

It makes me want to cry just thinking about no pictures. I love to fuss about and make my kids so stinkin' cute as Maddie would say each year on Halloween. It makes me so sad not to have all the pictures to look back on and smile from the memories.

Plus I am one of those "posters" that always has to have a picture to go along with my words, so here it is:

That is why this little gem is at the bottom of this post. Plus I rather like the expression Miss M has in the picture: I wonder what kind of things are going on inside her head? She has been so proud of her "band" that she made at preschool last Monday and has worn it every day since then. She even reminds me that there is a number 2 on her hat because there are two bats on it as well.

Happy Halloween everyone!

2nd Annual: Schnepf Farms

We had such a fun time last year at Schnepf Farms, that I knew we definitely needed to go again this year. The first time we could all go together as a family was on October 30th due to work schedules/other family activities/etc. At Schnepf Farms they offer half price on Oct 30/31st if you dress up in costumes so we threw ourselves together and went after Jesse got home from work. The kids ended up in their costumes from last year: Cinderella and ASU Football player with Jesse & I as cowboy/cowgirl. It was so much fun once again. We started out having Maddie's face painted with a "green ghost" per Miss M's order.

After some fun face painting we went on Robby's number one favorite obsession: trains. He loved riding the train and reminded us about it the rest of the night. We made sure we hit up the petting barn, rode the bike cars, went down the tunnel slide, played in the kids area, Miss M rode the carousel, and finally had some YUMMY home cookin' while listening to a live country band play.

Thank you Schnepf Farms for another fun fall activity. The kids are already talking about going next year and we will for sure make a whole day out of it next time!