This Thanksgiving we are thankful to have so much family nearby.  We had the Byams, the Derek Wesels and Alli over for Thanksgiving. 

I used the opportunity to get my first nice set of dishes and a new tablecloth.  I love doing this kind of thing so I had lots of fun with it.  Here’s the spread!

Here are the place cards the kids helped me make.

Aren’t leave rubbings awesome!!!  I love fall!

And now for the most important part of Thanksgiving-the People!

Cute little Dustin in Liberty’s doll stroller.

Cutting the turkey

Too many screens!!!

Cleaning off the turkey.  I’m so glad Uncle Calvin was willing to do this most disgusting job! 

Dessert!  Alli was shocked at the number of yummy options. 

Lincoln REALLY got into his chocolate pie.

 
Liberty, on the other hand, was so tired, she couldn’t get into her chocolate pie.  She sat like this for at least a minute.

Hope you all had a happy, deliriously tiring Thanksgiving! 

Watching the destruction of Hurricane Sandy in our favorite East Coast states of New York and New Jersey was hard for us.  New Jersey will always have a special place in our hearts and so we decided to do something to help.  As a family we raked leaves here in Boise to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief.  Here’s our cool flyer:

We even made a website where people could go to sign up.  We passed out about 50 flyers, but only had a handful of people sign up.  We were able to raise over $100.00, though.  It was lots of work, but it was such a great experience for the kids.

I will say that it was more work to keep the kids on task and raking than it was to actually do the raking, but such is life with little kids.  And ironically enough, if I had to give out a “Hardest Worker” award it would go to Levi.  He is the smallest, but he worked hard MOST of the time.  Way to go Levi John!

We did let them play a little bit.

When we were done at Byams, Uncle Calvin made us his “internationally” famous pancakes.  They were very yummy and the boys are STILL talking about them.

Thank you to all those who helped us with this service project.  Our thoughts and prayers are still with you, New Jersey!

I recently started a Lego Club for my boys and several other kids with another homeschool mom.  So far it’s been lots of fun.

First challenge: write your name.

Next challenge: using just the legos from your kit, see how long a creation you can make.

We helped out at Aunt Janie’s farm last week with all the kids.  The kids had lots of fun and worked hard-mostly.

I didn’t anticipate how cold it would be so Aunt Janie let us borrow some hats. They were just a little bit too big. I love his ears.
 

We loaded three or four truck loads of wood! 

Even Liberty helped out.

We’ll be back to help out with the rest of the leaves!  Thanks for giving us a chance to serve, Byams!  Somehow you escaped without being in any of our pictures, but we’ll get you next time!

Reagan hit double digits last month!  It’s hard to believe it.  Seems like just yesterday…. ok, I won’t make you read a sappy mother’s trip down memory lane. 

Reagan has grown up quite a bit this year.  He is thoughtful and very aware of other’s feelings.  If he sees someone suffering or hurt in any way his heart is touched and he wants to help and often does.  Most of the time he is acutely aware of how his actions or what he says could affect someone.  Watch out when he sees any injustice in the world-it’s not pretty.  He has recently made a new best friend in our neighborhood/ward.  He is very much into politics and has a keen sense of his liberty and even, to his mother’s horror, asked his new best friend if he was a republican.  The world is very black and white for Reagan.  It’s a good thing he has his father, because the world is very black and white for me too, I’m afraid. 

I dropped him off at Webelos the other night and the thought struck me that now, especially in light of the new age requirements for missionaries, we have had Reagan in our home longer than we have left with him in our home.  The thought was sobering and sad to me.  Made me cry a little.  I thought of all we have left to teach him and it was overwhelming.  Then when I shared this sad, sobering thought with Rock, he just cheered and said, “We’re more than half way done!”  Typical.

Here are the birthday highlights.

Nine 10 year olds.  Believe it or not, it was much calmer than his 8th birthday party.

He had a Ninjago lego party.  That is a Ninjago figure cake. 

Letting Liberty help open presents.

Harry Potter #4.  We’ve been holding him off for a while now.  Thus the reaction.

Dart guns from his siblings.  They now have a full set again and enough darts to have a good war.  They’ve had a dart gun fight every day this week.

Levi had a good time at the party.  A sucker from the piñata AND birthday cake.  Go sugar overdose.

Happy Birthday, Reagan!  We love you!

The Pumpkins

In order from left to right: “Didn’t Have Time to Carve, but at Least She Won’t Really Care Till Next Year”, “Freaky Eyes”, “The Falcon” and “The Fox”.

The Costumes:

The Pig

What ELSE could she be?  The only pink animal that exists.  Thank goodness there is one!

The Fox

Can you say, “CHEESE!”

Harry Potter

It’s Daniel Radcliff!  (with dimples) 

The Ninja

Trick or Treating:
Think about what would be the WORST thing to happen to you on Halloween night just before it’s time to go trick or treating?  If you guessed throwing up, you’d be right!  And that’s exactly what Cade did.  Twenty minutes before it was time to go, he lost his dinner (before he could get to the bathroom, I might add.) thanks to a flu that he caught from Reagan (who was just barely well enough to go T or T’ing himself).  Poor guy.  His brothers worked EXTRA hard to get enough candy for the three of them. 
I must say it was so refreshing to Trick or Treat here in the West again.  It’s very different out East and not nearly as much fun.  For one thing, people actually trick or treat AT NIGHT here.  But we are thinking of all our wonderful friends in NJ who didn’t get to go trick or treating on Halloween for the 2nd year in a row because of crazy storms.  You’re in our prayers!

This was Liberty’s first time and she had a blast.  She yelled thank you as loud as she could at every door.

“Hmm, something pink…..”

”Aha!”  

First thing she ate of course.

On a side note, the homeschool Halloween party I was in charge of was a hit.  We had about 75 kids and it pretty much went off without a hitch.   It was crazy and loud and fun!  But I am soooo glad it’s over!

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!