Thanksgiving weekend.

 For the first time ever Thanksgiving this year was just us. I had invited a new family from our ward to come over but the dad is a medical student and ended up having to be in the hospital the whole day. Once we found that out I asked around a bit, but everyone else we asked had already made plans. And it was a great day. Sophie was pretty sad we weren't having any friends over, but we convinced her we'd survive. It was nice to not be worried about dinner being right on time or cleaning the house for guests. It was strange making a big dinner for just our family! After our turkey dinner we went sledding and then came back for pie.

 The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went to get our tree! We went to the same place as last year and had a lovely time.

 Nora wanted this huge tree that would probably take up our entire living room!

It's tradition to let the kids sleep under the tree the first night we put it up. A tradition that gets more fun the older they get because they will actually lay down and have fun looking at the tree rather than jumping all over the furniture until way past bedtime! What a fabulous weekend!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had Thanksgiving dinner with our friends, the Allee family. They were in our ward in Michigan and ended up moving here a year after us! I didn't get that many pictures, but we had a great time and lots of yummy food!

The kids table (minus the Allee's two little boys) I'm not sure what Wes is doing here, hopefully not wiping his mouth off on their couch! :)

Ellary and Miles

 

Nora made her and Teddy matching turkey shirts and matching capes for the day. The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went to get our tree! Growing up both Brian and I always went up the mountains and cut our trees down. In Michigan we found a tree farm and we knew we wanted to find another tree farm here. The last 2 years here we haven't loved where we got our trees so Brian and I looked on-line and found two Tree farm options that we were debating between. I wanted to go to the one that had the fancier website but Brian thought this other one would be more up our alley. So I agreed to try this one out and we were so glad we did. It was on a beautiful farm out in the countryside of Wisconsin and it was perfect.

Santa was sitting in the barn and the kids were excited to tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Sophie: a pillow with arm rests, Nora: a ukelele, Miles: a video game, Wesley: batman

There were two sets of these gorgeous Belgian Draft horses that pulled everyone around the tree fields. You could choose which field you wanted to get out at, find your tree and wait for the next trailer to come pick you up.

We got out at a field with different kinds of trees and it didn't take long to find the perfect one!

We had to make it back to a friend's baptism so we carried our tree up to the farm instead of waiting for the horses again. While we were being pulled around the different fields there were some trees that had blue ribbons on them. Our driver told us they were just for marking the fields but back at the farm there was a sign that said those trees were only $10 because they were getting cut down this year anyway!!  It took me a while to get over the fact that we paid $37 and we could have paid $10 for a tree. But we had a great time and we love our tree. Next year we'll know!

We bought some fresh and yummy kettlecorn there and took our tree home. Such a perfect time, and definitely a new Wisconsin tradition!

Thanksgiving!!

 

We were lucky to have our good friends, the Johnson's, come to stay with us for Thanksgiving! The kids were SO excited and I was reminded why we usually don't tell them when people are coming.... they were all anxiously watching out the front window and constantly asking when they going to get there for over an hour!

 

The kids all had a great time sleeping together in the family room. We kept Wesley upstairs, but even baby Bennett slept in the family room in his playpen so he could sleep by his brothers. Cute! 

Timmy telling some great stories to the kids.

 

Miles and Grant sleeping by each other. Awwww. Grant was so sweet, the first night they got here I heard Grant say, "I love you Miles!" Sweet boy.

 

Wesley was pretty nice to Bennett. I think this was the turning point when they bonded over cheese puffs and redvines....

 

Angela and Bennett loved Scooter and Scooter loved having their attention. 

 

Lots of lego playing! 

 

We took advantage of having "Timmy- the- tool-man- Johnson" here and he and Brian filled in the annoying extra door to our bathroom! He claimed that he loved doing it and I'm so thankful because it looks SO much better and I don't know when we would have gotten around to doing it. And if we had done it by ourselves there's no way it would look as good as it does now. Thanks Timmy! Please come back again when we are ready to re-do the dining room floor. :)

On Thanksgiving Day we had some more friends over: the Ross family and the Condie family. There were 13 kids and I was extremely happy that it was warm enough for them all to eat on the deck out back! We had lots and lots of yummy food and a great time. I didn't get enough pictures though!

The girl and boy tables!

Apparently it was even warm enough that Wesley didn't even need pants on! Actually he woke up from his nap right in the middle of dinner starting and I didn't take the one minute it would have taken to put his pants on. When he went outside to play later my friend Tessa was teasing me because I put his jacket on but still no pants. It was pretty warm out there :)

Wesley was tormenting poor Hallie (the cute blonde baby girl). I caught him yanking on both of her little pigtails.... so sad! I put him in his crib for a while and when I went up to get him he had climbed out and was happily playing with his train table.

 A shot of the grown-up table...

Timmy and Sophie made an apple pie again this year. Yummy! 

Angela and I went to Wal-Mart that night at 8 and had a great time. We got almost everything we wanted and were home by 9:15. That beats getting up at 5am! Although I do feel bad for the workers who had to be there on Thanksgiving... and I went to Wal-Mart today and saw one of the things there for the same price it was on Black Friday. Lame! Oh, well. We had a great time. We loved having the Johnson's come and stay with us. They are so much fun. What a great Thanksgiving! 

Thanksgiving!

We went back to Michigan for Thanksgiving and had such a fun time with our friends there. The kids all played together just like old times and Miles even tried to go in our old house to get something! Nora was SO excited to see Maddie and they spent a lot of time crafting together, and even called themselves "the craft girls", which it says in the picture they are coloring.

Just hanging out...

We stayed with the Johnson's and these three boys were pretty darn excited to be having a sleepover. They were so cute together the whole time. Zach and Grant are so good at sharing their toys. Miles was in heaven and is still asking me when we are going back!

More hanging out...

These 3 played together a lot as well and all had fun being puppies and superhero's! Zach introduced Miles to the world of superheroes and today he asked me to be Wonderwoman. I asked what Superhero he was and he said, "Dinoco Lightning!"

There were kids all over the place...

Sophie also got to stay with her BFF from Michigan - Ellie! They had fun and Ellie was so cute and started crying when she saw Sophie.

Sophie and Timmy made a yummy apple pie together.

And the Johnson's cooked the turkey. On Thanksgiving Nora informed both Brian and I that she was not going to eat any turkey because turkey's are animals and part of nature. And she hasn't eaten meat since. She has never really liked it so it's not too surprising. I imagine she'll still eat it sometimes, but we'll see where that goes. :) Sophie loves taking care of the little kids. Especially if they let her carry them around. Here she is with cute Emmaline Jane. Who is adorable.

At Zach's house Miles fell in complete love with this Dinoco Lightning toy (that used to be Spencer's). He kept it with him constantly and before we left Zach gave it to Miles! And he is so thrilled. He has played with it every day and slept with it every night since he got it! Thanks Zach! I don't think Miles needs Christmas now.

The only downfall to our trip was that we had to say good-bye. Sad! We had such a great time and we miss them all over again!

Here we are on our way home! The kids were amazing both ways. We definitely have some good travelers! We only stopped once on the way to Michigan and once on the way home. Awesome. And they only watched one movie on the way there and one and a half on the way home. There's our plant, Rapunzel, in the back window that Ruth was saving for me! It's nice to have her back.