Monday, November 30, 2009

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was great! I actually managed to leave the fall decorations up so we weren't having thanksgiving surrounded by Christmas decorations. Wednesday was our annual Pie Night. I'm loving the tradition of gorging on pie before filling up on Turkey dinner. I'm so glad our family is willing to travel to see us for the holidays. It's was great that Mel can all the way down, we never get to see her enough! Bryan's mom Alice stayed the night and stayed for Thanksgiving day. It was great to have her visit and spend time with the boys. I don't think I mentioned she was great 2 weeks ago.
Ben's class to prep for Thanksgiving decided to have a Native American Thanksgiving. They have been studing Native Americans so decided to spend a few weeks learning how the Indians harvest food for the winter. They dried fish, made their own beef jerkey, gathered nuts and fruit etc. Bryan's mom was great she came down for a day, went into Ben's class and taught them all how to make Navajo fry bread and tortillas. She was great and talked about her life growing up hearding sheep, drying their own salt, growing their own food, etc. She just turned 71 and most of her life was spent on the Indian Reservation in New Mexico. They lived very traditionally in a Hogan no utilites, hearding sheep. Her father was a medicine man so she had an interesting life, very different from ours.
They kids all Loved the fry bread, and couldn't wait to eat the homemade tortillas for their Thanksgiving feast.
I didn't spend much time in Ben's class on their Thanksgiving day because I had volunteered to Host Brandon's class party. It was like pulling teeth to get enough parents to help with the dinner, and not one showed up in the class to do crafts or games, but the kids are a little older in his class so it worked out fine. It was funny, the night before the feast I sent out yet another mass email to the parents telling them we had no one to bring pie and it wasn't Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie. One parent said she would make a pie, so I was hoping it would be enough. When I got to the school the next day we had 7 pumpkin pies! 3 of them the HUGE Costco pies! It was hilarious. The kids got to eat all the pie they wanted and then some.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Family Pictures

Busy Week

Aren't they all! Took the GRE, am rushing to finish my application for grad school, threw together a b-day party for Sean, now looking forward to planning Thanksgiving etc. But So excited, got our family pictures back.!!!
Loving them. Wanted something a little retro and of course Marta is the queen of pictures. She has the patience of Job!! I couldn't hack all the kids and families so I got out of the picture business a long time ago. Marta is amazing. Check out her blog at . She is an amazing photographer, nurse, friend, all around super mom! Love her!
I'm going to add a slide show here, but there are too many great one's to put them all on, so the family shots first then I'll work on the kids later.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Sean's Birthday


Today was Sean's Party. It's so funny. His parties must be the thing, because he always get's every person he invites and then some to show up at his birthday.
He choose and Incredibles Party today, of course the first major storm of the winter, so we were all huddled in the basement with no outside time. So many kids, but he had fun.
He is an amazing 7 year old. He really is so much fun and so affectionate! He is a crazy kid, but we are sure glad to have him around.






Spent the night before at work making cardboard blocks, so the boys could build walls and breakthem down like Mr Incredible. Found free download iron on's off the internet to make the shirts. The kids loved getting a shirt in their gift bags.