Thanskgiving 2012

This year as usual we went to my parents house in Irrigon for Thanksgiving. It was a small gathering with just Tamra, Tucker, Jim, my parents and our family. My mom's Thanksgiving dinner is something I look forward to every year. She makes the best stuffing and gravy and pies........ok I am getting hungry again. I contributed the sweet potatoes this year (which were way too sweet) and have also become the official roll maker. I sadly did not take any pictures this year of dinner or everyone that was there. I did however eat a very large amount of delicious food and enjoy being with my family and just relaxing together and laid on the couch like a loafer most of the day.

That night we drove back home and had a babysitter lined up for the kids so we could go do some late night/early morning Black Friday shopping. I've never really done Black Friday shopping or really wanted to, but we thought if we got a babysitter and Riley and I went together it might be fun and a night out none the less. So what the heck. The first store we went to was crazy, but the others were fine and we scored some great deals. I thought all in all most everyone was polite and helpful and it wasn't that bad of an experience and I might even go as far to say that we had fun.

Saturday we met up my family at the fairgrounds in Hermiston for the second year in a row to see the Christmas lights and ride in the horse drawn carriage. It is always fun and the kids love it. Here is grandma Melodee and the kids waiting for our ride:




I love this picture of them all with grandma. I am thankful for this time of year when we are reminded and can reflect on our many blessings and spend more time with those we love.

Thanksgiving 2011

Our Thanksgiving weekend in a few short words:

**The BEST Thanksgiving dinner. Seriously, we have good cooks in our family.

**Pumpkin pie and homemade whip cream (and repeat, and repeat, and repeat)

**Family

**Laughing

**Shooting practice (our family likes guns)

**Snacking, snacking, snacking

**Visiting with relatives at my grandparents house

**Horse drawn carriage ride through the Hermiston fair grounds all lit up for Christmas

**Seeing Santa

**Fudrucker's (or as Morgan calls it, Funnyrucker's)

**Play time with cousins and lots of loud fun being had

**Night at the movies with my mom and little sis

**Getting all the Christmas decorations out

**Putting up our Christmas tree

**Hearts full of thankfulness for all of our many blessings.

Thanksgiving 2010:

Snowy

Cold

Cozy

Fun

Delicious

Filled with good eats

Family

Laughter

Memories

Hugs

Babies

Full bellies

Wafting aroma's

Cousins

Turkey

Banana/Pineapple Slush

Mom's pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream

Football

Playing in the snow

Black Friday Ads

Contentment

and......

unfortunately a nasty flu bug.

I wish every Thanksgiving could be as perfect as this one. (minus the sickness of course.)

I was so thankful to have every one of my siblings home for the holiday. They are all special people to me. I'm glad to say we still act like a bunch of ten year old's when we're together. They are some of my favorite people to spend time with and I hope my kids will feel the same way about each other when they are older.

**P.S. I have some exciting news to share in the next day or two.

Quick Monday Note

So glad it's Monday again and we can get back to the normal routine. What an exhausting weekend we had. I am T-I-R-E-D. Stayed up till 2 in the morning Friday and Saturday night, babies not sleeping, Morgan keeping me awake with his barking seal cough laying on the floor next to my bed, and just trying to get caught up on everything that was pushed aside the last few days. I am feeling pretty run down, but as my dad would say - I'm keeping the fluids going and drinking plenty of OJ.

Riley's team heads to the final four this weekend in Lakewood and we will make one last busy week out of it. They play Friday afternoon and then if they win they play in the championship on Saturday and if they lose they play for third or fourth place. This week will be full of making arrangements and preparations and packing. Hopefully, we can make it an enjoyable weekend for everyone involved. It is exciting! What a great way to end the season.

I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week. I have so many projects and things to get done before then. I need just a few more hours in the day to get everything done. I'm looking forward to the good food and visiting with my family. I'm already craving my mom's delicious stuffing and pies.  Next week will be our first soccer free week and I couldn't think of a better way to top it off than Thanksgiving and enjoying a wonderfully relaxing weekend. It is crazy to think that last year during Thanksgiving we were struggling to tote two babies around and trying to survive with zero sleep. This year we will be chasing two walkers around who will be trying to get into everything. :)

Thanksgiving 2008

Our Thanksgiving was very good this year. My grandparents on my mothers side came from Idaho to stay with my parents and it was good to visit with them as we don't get to see them very often. It was just a very relaxing holiday, not a lot of fuss and work. I am glad to say I did not eat myself into oblivion like Thanksgiving's past, but did enjoy my fair share of pie and stuffing. My mom sent me home with my own container of stuffing and that didn't last very long! I'm so thankful for my parents and all they do, especially around the holidays. I can't believe I took my camera with me and didn't take one picture.

The day after Thanksgiving my mom and I did some shopping and although I scored the tv armoire I wanted (it was fate), it was too crazy to shop for much else. We tried to go to Michael's and it was insanely packed so we left. I cannot stand crowds and being packed into small spaces. I do not need anything that bad. I always think about how I would get out if there was an emergency. So we left, came back to our place, and had a little impromptu party with some other family members that were in town. We ate some pizza, had leftover pie, did lots of visiting, and made some cute Christmas crafts. That night after everyone left, Riley and I put the armoire together and managed to not kill each other in the process. Except for one of the doors hanging slightly crooked, I would say it was a success.

Now that it is December 1st, I can officially start getting in the mood for Christmas. We put up our tree on Saturday, and I have boxes of Christmas decorations waiting to be unpacked in my living room. Kendle is dying to help decorate the tree, but I wanted to look around for a few new things to put on it first. At least since it is pre-lit, (yep we rock the fake tree) we can enjoy the glow of the lights in the mean time. It always makes everything seem a shade cozier. The Christmas movies have started on television, and I'm looking forward to some family time relaxing in front of the fire. This time of year I just want to hole up inside my home until it's warm again.

Hope you all had a great holiday weekend.

Brrrr.......

*photo via

What a cold, frosty, foggy morning it is. I was hoping we'd get to keep our crisp nice days for Thanksgiving. I had to send Kendle to the bus with a hat, gloves, and scarf and I'm still worried she won't be warm enough. It's so foggy that I couldn't see her walking farther than a few houses before it swallowed her up. I remember when I was a kid how much I used to hate walking to the bus in the cold winter weather and stand there waiting. It really annoys me how far Kendle has to walk to her bus stop. It's not "five miles in the snow and uphill both ways" far, but to a little six year old it's quite the walk in the morning. And it's on the corner of a busy street, which always worries me because people drive way too fast on Wrigley in the morning. Anywho, I would love to say I'm going to curl up by the fire with a blanket, drink some hot cocoa, and relax today - but Thanksgiving is in two days! I've got to finish some laundry, make sure the bedrooms are clean, (it's always better to come home to a clean bedroom when you've been away right?), and make a last minute run to the store. I thought I was totally done, but alas, something inevitably is forgotten or needed. I'm the snack lady so I'm bringing my famous little smokie wraps, a cheese ball and crackers, and layered bean dip and chips.

*Extra credit: What's your favorite snack to take to family gatherings?

Thanksgiving Learning and Fun

We all know about the first Thanksgiving in 1621 and how the Native Americans and the Pilgrims shared a feast. But do you know how it actually became a national holiday?

After 1621, future Thanksgiving celebrations occurred at various times throughout the year. George Washington declared a feast of Thanksgiving in 1789, and presidents issued similar yearly proclamations after that. During the Civil War, poet Sarah Hale started a campaign to celebrate the holiday on the same day throughout the country.

President Abraham Lincoln saw it as a way to unite the country, and in 1863 he proclaimed a national Thanksgiving celebration on the last Thursday in November. It was changed from the last Thursday to the third Thursday by Franklin Roosevelt in 1939 as a way to lengthen the Christmas shopping holiday. In 1941, Roosevelt finally changed the date to the fourth Thursday in November, proclaiming it a Federal holiday in 1941.

I thought that was pretty interesting. I did not know it had been changed that many times. Throughout the month our family is going to be talking about what we are thankful for and learning more about the Thanksgiving holiday. We're making a trip to the library in the next few days and will be picking up some books related to the holiday and the history of it.

There are so many resources and ideas on the web for cute crafts and activities. I thought I'd share some that I found:

*If you're looking for some cute coloring pages, clip art, and other activities for you children to keep them busy on afternoons after school check out this link:
http://holidays.kaboose.com/thanks-color.html
There are lots of cute printables.

*The Family Fun website always has lots of cute things too. I especially liked these little pilgrim place cards:
http://familyfun.go.com/arts-and-crafts/season/feature/famf117tabletop/famf117tabletop6.html

*I also thought this idea for "Harvest Blessing Snack Mix" was very cute. The link also has a free printable tag to include with it if you like:
http://familycrafts.about.com/od/thanksrecipes/a/thxblessmix.htm

*Ever wonder if your ancestors came over on the Mayflower? Take a look at this list and see if you can find any familiar names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_passengers_on_the_Mayflower

Thanksgiving is one of those Holiday's that just quietly creep up on us.

What is one of your favorite things to do for the Thanksgiving Holiday?

Thankful Tree

Want a fun way for you and your family to display all that you are thankful for??
Make a Thankful Tree!
( Our family did this one year and it was really fun, maybe I'll try it again this year. )

You will need:

1 large brown paper bag (or we used butcher paper)

Construction Paper, red, yellow and orange

Cut open the brown paper bag by cutting down one of the creases and then cutting the bottom off. Lay the paper out on the table and use about half to ¾ of the length of the bag to draw a tree trunk.

Staple, tape or pin this to the back of a door or a bulletin board. (we just taped it to a wall in my parents family room)

Use the remaining pieces of the bag to make branches for the tree. Staple those coming from the tree trunk. This does not need to be fancy and you don’t need to be an artist to do this ...

















Now make leaves out of construction paper. Make lots of them! You can use a basic maple leaf design or any leaf design you would like. You can hand them out to everyone and have them write down what they are thankful for this year. Then tape them to the tree and enjoy.

The children really enjoyed this and it was a good reminder for them to think about their blessings.
























How nice to have a heart full of thanks when you sit down to your Thanksgiving dinner!

Gobble, Gobble

I found these cute turkey place cards here and decided to make them for my family. They are fairly simple and only require a few supplies, which is my type of craft. On the tail feathers are random Thanksgiving trivia questions and the answers are on the back. The website has the template and questions you can print out if you'd like to make them for your own family.

1 Week to go!

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only a week away. Next Thursday will be one of my favorite days of the year. My how the time flies. It seems like it was only yesterday that I was getting my morning sickness under control and having dreams, (real dreams) about eating delicious food at Thanksgiving, not just dry cereal like I'd been living off of for the last couple of months. That was the turning point at which I started to feel somewhat normal again. Oh, the magic of mom's home cooked heavenly turkey and stuffing. I don't know about the rest of the world, but Thanksgiving's with my family are a 24 hour food fest. A shameless display of gorging and feasting that lasts all weekend long. I am so thankful to belong to a family that loves to eat as much as I do.

In expectation of Thanksgiving, not only will I be preparing my waistline, but also reflecting on all of my many blessings and what I am truly thankful for. There are no words to describe how I feel to be surrounded by my family during the holidays and share those precious memories with them. I realize that as we get older we need to enjoy these moments, life can be short and unexpected. I have much to be thankful for this year.