Happy Thanksgiving 2010

This year we spent Thanksgiving Day at Grandma and Grandpa Lee's house.  We woke up early that morning and got to Grandma's in time for the parade.  The men and children played and watched the parade and the women spent the morning cooking and preparing the feast.  Alexis and Emily also assisted a bit in the kitchen helping to prepare different dishes.  Alexis has decided that next year she wants to be in completely in charge of one dish all on her own.  We all feasted on the yummy food.  Emily's favorite was the mashed potatoes and the dirt pudding desert.  Alexis' favorite was Mommy's pumpkin cheesecake I brought, and Ashley's favorite was the corn on the cob and the rolls.  The rolls were a bit more oval shaped so she kept calling them "hot dogs".  :)  After we ate and cleaned up Alexis and Emily did a Thanksgiving play for us that Alexis wrote.  It was all about the pilgrims and Indians and it was really cute.  We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing and visiting.  We spent the night and then headed over to Nana and Papaw Grammer's home in the morning.  They were out of town Thanksgiving Day visiting Great Grandma Flo.  We ate there and visited and Don helped his Dad with a few projects.  It was a wonderful Thanksgiving and it was nice to get to spend time with both sets of grandparents.

Sleepy Pictures

One day Ashley simply would not fall asleep for her afternoon nap no matter how hard I tried.  Later in the afternoon around 4:00 I noticed she was being very quiet. So I looked around and found her on the playroom couch fast asleep with some little stuffed friends. 

Another evening Don went up to bed before me and he called me upstairs.  He wanted me to see Emily and Ashley.  They were fast asleep and holding hands. 

A Sunday Walk with Firefly and Rosebud

Since I didn't get any good pictures of our walk with our goats last time I thought I'd grab my camera this time.  To be honest they seem to enjoy walking with us so much we've actually taken them out quite a few times since then, but this is the first I've remembered my camera.  The girl's also took a couple of carriages out and some dolls to walk as well.  Ashley decided she wanted to walk some dolls too, but we didn't have another carriage, so Alexis shared hers.  Between the doll carriages and the goats we were quite a site and Don decided that maybe next time we should take either the dolls or the goats, but not both.  Even though there isn't much traffic on our street every once in a while a car will go by and trying to get a toddler, two little girl's with doll carriages, and 2 goats on to the side of the road did prove to be a bit much.  ;)

Big Fire

Don has been slowly clearing out the woods behind our house this autumn. The goal is to eventually get all the vines and thorns and brush cleared out. It's a several year project but he's making good headway. He's been piling all the brush on our fire pit. There was a HUGE pile. So we invited Uncle Jason, who also likes to play with fire up for the weekend so the two "boys" could play together. :) They had a great time turning that pile into a HUGE fire. After it had burned down the girl's roasted marshmallows on it.

Helping with Dishes and Mopping

Lately every time I start doing dishes Ashley runs over and begs to put up on the counter.  She then helps rinse off dishes but mostly just plays in the water.  She gets soaked, so normally I take her clothes off first, but every so often if I know she's getting a bath anyways, I'll leave them on.  These pictures were taken one morning when the girls were doing their morning chores.  Emily had finished hers so she decided to join in on the fun as well.  They got the floor a bit wet, but Alexis actually had the chore that day of mopping the kitchen floor, so she said they were a big help to her.  :)

Halloween 2010

This Halloween we had a cute little Indian, a precious angel, and an adorable little baby bear.  We had our annual family Halloween party the FHE before Halloween.   It was so fun, as always.  We listened to Halloween music, carved pumpkins, hunted for little ghosts hidden throughout the the house, played "find monster Daddy", and played a fun game called trick or treat where you pull a paper out of a bowl and if it has "treat" you pick out a piece of candy and if it has "trick" you do whatever is on the paper.  The tricks were things like broomstick races, doing a witch dance, eating a hanging donut, transferring little Halloween shapes by straw into a bowl, and feeding the little shoebox monster marbles.  We all had fun playing these games as a family and after that the girls went trick or treating.  Don and I each went behind a bedroom door and pretended to be different people and the girls trick or treated.  It's something the girls look forward to every year and they always can't wait to see who pretend to be each time.  :)  We ended the evening eating special treats I made - witch hats for ice cream and a spider web cheesecake dessert.  While we ate we watched, "Bear in the Big Blue House Halloween" and "Pooh's Heffulump Halloween".  Later that week we took the girl's trick or treating.  It was VERY cold outside but we got full buckets of candy.  Ashley was actually very into it this year.  She would excitedly jump out of her stroller and run up to the door and yell, "Tick or Teat!"  Then when they opened the door she started asking, "You have chocate?"  Sometimes they would put the candy directly into her pumpkin and then she would hold her little hand out and say, "Ah me?   Ah me?" and they would say, "Awww." and give her one for her hand.  We would remind her to say, "Thank you." and she said something each time but we couldn't quite make it out.  After awhile we figured out she was saying, "Gracious."  :)  She also learned to say, "Happy Hawoween!" that night to people.  A couple of days later Don went out of town flying so we visited my parents and the girls got to go trick or treating again.  So we are definitely set for candy for a while.  :)

Our Little Turtle Friend

We had some big winds and storms come through our area a couple of weeks ago. Before they came Don found a turtle outside. He brought it up to the deck for the girls to see. They all fell in love with it and Ashley especially would squeal every time he poked his head out and began to move. They knew we were preparing for the winds and storms and so they asked about the turtle. We told them he would be fine but we could tell they were concerned. So we told them that maybe it was a good idea to put the little turtle in a box with some food and water until tomorrow after the storms passed. So they excitedly prepared him a home with leaves and grass and a few tomatoes we still had growing from our garden. They also put a little paper plate and put water on it for him. He seemed happy enough and we ended up keeping him for a couple of days before we said goodbye to him and set him free.