Tuesday, November 20, 2012

early Thanksgiving


This weekend we had an early Thanksgiving get together with my family since we can’t all be together for Thanksgiving. It was nice to spend this time together. And we didn’t eat turkey – there will be enough of that this week. 
My family likes to play games…my husband does not, but he’s a good sport and will humor me for special occasions. Gage has not had much exposure to games yet, but he had great fun on Saturday. For him it is not about playing the games; it is about the cool pieces that go to the games. At one point, while we left him unattended, he got ALL the games out and ALL the pieces out. It was an epic mess in our living room. But with many hands working, we got it all put back together quickly. 
So that he could start dismembering everything again.
Gage with Uncle Ben


Our Italian menu: homemade spaghetti and ravioli (I make the pasta dough…Danny runs it through the machine. There is less fighting that way.) Antipasti was provided by my sister and her husband. It was so tasty and we snacked so much that we weren’t really hungry for lunch. But in true thanksgiving fashion we went ahead and filled our bellies to bursting. 




I even tried to get fancy with the name tags. 


Then we had spiced cider and pumpkin pie. That's when we all had to undo the top button on our pants. Good thing I wore legging with elastic.
Gage didn't remember having pumpkin pie before, so he was excited to try it.
success!
M&M was also a fan
 A good time was had by all.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Halloween

This year we did not do a lot for Halloween. In the past we have decorated the house inside and out, created great costumes, and hosted a HUGE party. For various reasons we decided not to do that this year. We did dress up (my favorite part of halloween) and go to someone else's party with a group of our friends. We decided very last minute to all go as the characters from Clue and I think we pulled it off pretty well.

Then it was time for my kids to dress up for Halloween. We decided to not take them trick-or-treating; Gage-a-rooni still gets pretty freaked out by a lot of things. So we opted to go to the Harvest Festival at our church. It was great. They had bouncy houses galore, both inside and out. My son could barely contain his excitement when we pulled into the parking lot and he saw everything set up. There were also some fun carnival games and a magic show. There were a bunch of things for older kids too, but we didn't check it out. It was also nice to be able to ration the amount of candy our kids got. There was a ton available, but at this age it is pretty easy to distract them with something else.




We were blessed with a beautiful sunset, while we were surrounded by shrieks of laughter from millions of kids all around. As it got dark, we moved inside (to another bouncy house) and kept going. Gage-a-rooni was throughly worn out when we finally peeled him away and got him in the car to go home.



Sunday, November 11, 2012

Pumpkins

Ah...Fall is here. Well it has been here for awhile, but I'm just now writing about it. And tonight it is supposed to get down to around 14ºF, so we are quickly moving into winter. But on Halloween I had a crafty moment that I'd like to share, so here it goes.

You know how you look at Pinterest for hours (oh, is that just me??) and you repin all these great ideas about fun things to do with your kids, but you really never do them? Well, I did one!

I saw an idea to use mini pumpkins and decorate them like cute little nature creatures. So fun!! (do you hear the Pinterest euphoria in my voice?) So I took my kids to the grocery store and they each picked out some mini pumpkins - while we were there my son suggested that we also get some donuts.
So we did.
With our pumpkins and donuts safely home, we grabbed some bowls and headed outside to gather leaves, twigs, seeds, etc to glue to our pumpkins. It was a gorgeous day and we had a great time collecting all the things we would use. At first, when I told Gage-a-rooni what we were doing he wanted to "collect" a toy car he had left outside, then some sidewalk chalk, then a piece of plastic. I had to keep redirecting him to natural things, and he eventually got the idea. M&M had no difficulties collecting things. She had great fun running around picking things up.


Then we got our bounty inside, and after eating our donuts, we went to work on the pumpkins. I was armed with the hot glue gun, but the kids picked out the things they wanted to put on their creatures and where everything should go. 

 Our finished creations were, um, interesting.
But my kids are so proud of them. It was a lot of fun. 
And the donuts were tasty.