Thanksgiving

We did Thanksgiving with my family this year since we are going to spend Christmas up in McCall with Craig's family.  Everyone in my family was there except Tiffy's family went to California.  All of my Dad's brothers were in town so we decided to just do a huge Thanksgiving dinner all together.  I think there ended up being 43 people, including all of the kids. We had to do it at a church building but that allowed the kids to run around, which was nice. Brooklyn loved having Sunni's family in town, she is absolutely obsessed with Kobi and Kira.  Everyone was assigned a few food items to bring and everything turned out great.  We had plenty of leftovers to split between all of the families.  it was so good to see so much of my extended family.  I really love Thanksgiving and thinking about all the many things that we are blessed with.  I need to be better about showing my gratitude year round, because we have been truly blessed as a family by our Heavenly Father.

Do you want to build a snowman?

We had the opportunity to go up to McCall two weekends in November and both weekends there was quite a bit of snow.  The first weekend we went up my parents were able to come up with us.  The first thing Brooklyn wanted to do was build a snowman, of course. Luckily the snow in the backyard was great packing snow and grandma was willing to help her out.  We also drove up to Brundage, the ski resort, and played around in the snow up there.  Brooklyn was the only one with proper snow gear so the rest of us were a little chilly, but it was worth it to see how happy she was making snow angels and throwing snowballs.  It was really nice to be able to spend the weekend with my parents and Brooklyn loved the one-on-one time she was able to have with Grandma and Grandpa and it was nice to see my parents actually relax.

We were also able to get up to the cabin the weekend before Thanksgiving and Diane was able to come with us.  We had a lot of fun sledding.  Brooklyn was a little nervous at first and wanted to go with Craig but after a few times she then wanted to go all by herself.  One of us had to be at the bottom of the hill though so that she didn't end up in the lake. She kept wanting all of us to take turns sledding and even Nana took a turn. Once was enough for her though because she almost had to bail out when she was heading straight for the garbage cans. We went to Pancake House for breakfast one morning and while we were in there it snowed about 4 inches and it was the biggest snowflakes I have ever seen.  Brooklyn and Craig of course needed to throw a few snowballs on our way to the car.  One evening we went out to eat at a place called Lardo's.  Craig's family used to eat there a lot when he was little, but they hadn't been back for a while so we decided to check it out.  It was very good, but Brooklyn was not a fan of the green jello that came with the kids meal.  She made the funniest face I have ever seen, I wish I had gotten a picture of it.  It was at that moment that I realized my child had never had JELLO before, how awful is that?  Now whenever we go out to eat she asks if we are going to Lardo's, I think she just likes saying the name.  Brooklyn and Craig had a lot of fun making snowmen and Craig even made her a snow fort.  Craig and I have decided that we really need to invest in some snow boots.  We had a lot of fires and drank a lot of hot chocolate.  It was a super fun and relaxing weekend.  Can't wait until we get to go back up for Christmas!

Fall Fun

This fall we were lucky enough to have some really great weather.  It was warm enough for us to spend a lot of time out doors, which was good for us because we are used to Memphis and being able to go to the park and zoo all winter long.  We spent a lot of time at parks this fall and most of the time we would take a picnic lunch. We also spent quite a few Saturdays at the Eagle Farmer's Market with Paige and the kids when Craig and Mark had to work, they always had some fun kids activities. We were able to get to the zoo once before it cooled down too much.  I have already been having a hard time staying inside with Brooklyn the last month and we still have a lot of winter left.  Hopefully we can continue to find fun things to do inside. Luckily we have cousins that are close that we love to have play dates with.

King of the mountain

This was October.  I love that we got to wear shorts in October

She loves playing dress up with her cousin Audrey

Fishing at the Eagle Farmer's Market

Watching cartoons with LJ 

She kept running around saying "ride 'em cowboy, giddy-up"

trying on mommy's new boots

She loves to dress up, luckily she Santa will be bringing her some of her own dress up clothes for Christmas

Playing in the leaves at Nana and Pops

Up close and personal with the Lions

Brooklyn did not want to share the tiger

Petting the goats

Watching the duckies

Halloween

Halloween was so much fun this year with our little buzy bee.  She was so excited to dress up and carve pumpkins and get candy.  We decorated pumpkins at Mark and Paige's house this year and she had a lot of fun coloring and putting sticker on her pumpkins.  She was so proud to put them all out on the front porch.

When I told her to say cheese, she decided it was necessary to pull her dress up

The Saturday before Halloween we went out to Linder Farms with Pops and Nana to get a few more pumpkins and just play around.  She loved the horsey ride and didn't want any of us to walk around with her. She loved petting the animals, but was a little disappointed that there weren't any bunnies to pet.  She also love the barrel ride.  I offered to go with her but again she refused, she is growing up so much and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  She also got to play in the corn pit.  She kept asking to go back in and play, which I was fine with because that was the one free thing.  We also went on a hayride to go pick out a couple more pumpkins.  We all had a super fun time, this will definitely be a yearly tradition around Halloween.

She wanted to show us how strong she was

The Thursday before Halloween we went to the Trunk-or-Treat with Mark and Paige's ward, our ward wasn't doing one this year.  She had so much fun getting all dressed and ready with Audrey and Camden.  We prepped her before hand that everything was pretend and that she didn't need to be scared of anyone because they were all wearing costumes.  Each time she would walk up to a car she would say "trick-or-treating" and she was very good to say thank you each time some one gave her candy.  On Saturday we went trick-or-treating with Audrey and Camden around their neighborhood and then headed over to my parents house to do some trick-or-treating with LJ around my parents neighborhood.  Luckily the weather was really nice, so no one had to wear coats over their costumes.  It was so much fun to watch the joy on her face and to see how happy she was.  I can't wait to see her reaction Christmas morning.

Pops of course had to dress up too.