Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving week was kind of a funny one. Monday morning Kelly left for work and it took him 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to work!!! YIKES!!! It usually only takes him 15-25 minutes to get to work, but we had FREEZING RAIN. For those of you who don't know what that is, here is a picture.

This is a pure sheet of ice on the road in front of our house. Kids were literally ice skating in their ice skates down the street. Funny! Anyhow, so we had a ton of snow in Fairbanks the week before and then of course they plowed the road. Well, then it got warm ~30-35 degrees and rained on top of our beautiful snow. So, it made every road, parking lot, driveway a sheet of ice. They cancelled school (NEVER happens here), closed the military base (has NEVER happened EVER), and state offices closed. Needless to say, after Kelly's drive to work and drive home, Sam's Club Pharmacy was closed Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for the holiday. We couldn't leave our house!!! The main roads got taken care of, but the little back roads like ours stayed bad till it got cold and snowed again.

Now for Thanksgiving morning.... We woke up and watched the Macy's day parade (not Kelly he HATES parades) and started making a few things like the rolls for our dinner. I had DVR'd the parade because it started before we woke up so we could fast forward through commercials and all the silly commentary.

The boys both helped do a few things to get ready for dinner. Chance made the grape juice to go into our punch. He is very helpful and enjoys helping and tasting in the kitchen.

After the parade was over the boys in our house (all three) played video games and ate a ton of veggies and dip.

Hunter has really found a love for red bell peppers.

Chance and I decided it would be fun to dress up like the pilgrims and the indians, so we made ourselves some little costumes.

Momma and her boys

Dad and his buddies

I'm not sure what is up with the serious faces.

My indian boy playing his indian drum that he painted.

This is a picture of Hunter being "full".

Chance said he was full too, so this was his "full" face.

This is our Gratitude Turkey for the year. I decided to stick with the orange/yellow color this year and I think it turned out beautifully.

The funniest thing about our whole Thanksgiving happened while we were all laying in bed in the morning. The boys got into bed with us and were trying to get us up, but instead we all stayed in bed and talked. Kelly shared with us the Thanksgiving story. He told about the King who wouldn't let people make their own choices, and he wanted them to believe and act a certain way and he wanted everyone's money. Well, Hunter pipes up and says, "Hey, that sounds like Obama!!" Kelly and I were laughing so hard that I snorted!

Last but not least, I wanted to share Chancey's "costume of the month". This kid comes marching into the kitchen looking like this. I love him so much! What a guy!!

Buckets of Fun!

**NOTE** This is a Halloween post, however our Alaskan Halloween is different than most of your "lower 48" Halloween as we have SNOW and it is usually in the upper teens or low -20's temperature wise.

This is my good man Hunter shoveling the porches and steps. This is one of his school year chores.

We did several different holiday crafts.

Here Chance is doing a "stuffed pumpkin" he made a really cool Jack o' Lantern face on it.

Hunter did a fall leaf tree.
They are both very artistic!

Hunter was very particular about his branches. He also made sure to include some piles of dog poop at the base of the tree :)
The Wednesday before Halloween was our preschool party day.
Chance was Yoda and Hunter was Obi Wan for part of the day and Plo Koon for the other part of the day.

They were able to fit in a little bit of Light Saber practice before we left the house.

(notice Hunter's beard)

Thursday night we did our pumpkin carving. Chance was on my team and said he wanted to carve Yoda into his pumpkin. So....we did it, and he liked it!

Three year olds are so forgiving with a mother's artistic abilities.

Hunter and Kelly did a more complicated pattern called

"ichabod's fate"

Good thing there weren't too many seeds....we may have been there all night.

Chance loved to pull the seeds out.

Hunter was sure to get Dad to be his helper. Hunter is old enough to know that I am not cool or talented artistically.

Chance and I were a good team. Notice him hanging onto my arm while pushing the knife in :)

OOeey GoOey Seeds and GuTS

Master Yoda

Master Yoda and his "pig nosed" football helmeted carver.

This kid is somethin' else!

SPOokY!!!

sCaRY!

For lunch on Friday we decided to have my friends and their kids over for lunch.

(The kids who are my boys' age are girls. Hunter and Chance aren't big fans of having "THE GIRLS" over, but they put up with it.)

So, I have always wanted to do a really fun themed lunch.

So, we had:

Bones and Blood (Breadsticks shaped like bones w/marinara sauce)

Monster Jaws (Apple quarters with eyes and teeth)

Mummy Dogs (Hot dogs with crescent roll strips wrapped around them)

Ghosts in the Graveyard (cupcakes with nutter butters frosted to look like ghosts)

Witches Fingers (string cheese with knuckles and sliced almonds for fingernails)

Bats Blood (Apple Cranberry juice) thanks Lora

Skeleton (Veggies shaped into a skeleton) thanks Peggy

Saige, Ali, and Julia

Hunter, Chance, and Evelyn

Chance, Peggy in back w/Elias, Evelyn, Saige, Lora w/Hayden

Friday night was the ward party, and it was lots of fun. Hunter especially liked this game where you could throw a wet sponge at the guy poking his face through a piece of wood.

So, if you couldn't tell, we went with a Star Wars theme for our costumes this year. I was Aayla Secura, Chance was Yoda, and Hunter was Obi Wan/Plo Koon (can't wear a mask at church) and Kelly was a Jedi/Kit Fisto (can't wear a mask at church or work)

Kelly came to the church party after this picture was taken, but he was there and we won the family costume award!

All my sewing paid off :)

My little YODA love his green face and kept asking if it was still there.

At the party we played games and went trunk or treating. The boys thought that the trunk or treat was the greatest thing ever and couldn't believe how much candy they got.

(Good thing they have small bags to carry their candy in, because then it looks like a lot)

We didn't trick or treat on Sunday, but our land lord wanted to see our costumes, so we took the opportunity to dress up again and Kelly and Hunter could wear thier masks.
This is our fabulous Halloween picture 2010

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!!!

All Things Halloween

We have been so excited for Halloween this year!

Chance is excited about it enough for our WHOLE family.

So, as soon as the last week in September arrived.....

We decorated!

I think that the holidays are so magical for children, and the memories we make for them and with them are the ones that they will carry fondly throughout their lives.

So we do several holiday crafts together.

These little pumpkins were so simple, yet cute and something the boys could pretty much do on their own.

Chance is actually holding Hunter's and vice versa, but they had a great time regardless.

Aren't these darling? So quick and fun to make, yet add so much.

I put candles in mine so it is fun to see the little candle flicker.

I saw these on several websites, but I think the originator was

www.notsoidlehands.blogspot.com

My friend Christie and I got together and with her woodcutting skills, we made these pumpkins.

www.brownpaper--packages.blogspot.com came up with this one.

I LOVE that other people have great ideas, and that they are willing to share them with people like me :)


I also took the boys pictures this fall, and got them up. I love the way the fake leaves add to the picture wall.

More Fall colors, and our Halloween book stash.

I think I need to add to the Halloween books because I am beginning to memorize the ones we have.

Last but not least, we have our "Hall of Ghosts and Bats"

The boys love this, and Chance says our house is a

Haunted House.

I am not super extravagant with my holiday decorating, but it is fun for the boys

and that is all that matters.

** You should also note that we have homemade, hand drawn, and halloween clipart

EVERYWHERE you can think of in our house.

Our own Halloween Museum of Art

You know it is going to be a GREAT day when.......

This is NO JOKE!!!! So, being the wonderful wife that I am I was making Kelly and egg/bacon/cheese sandwich to eat on his way to work. So, I pulled out the eggs and whisked them up in the pan. Somebody needed help with something, so I left the stove for a minute. When I came back, this is what I saw looking at me.

It is a good old fashioned smiley face.

Really, that is a sign that it is going to be a great day!

Then in the evening Kelly showed up with 3 dozen roses (1 dozen not pictured).

Aren't they beautiful? I knew it was going to be a GREAT day!

While The Cat is Away.....The Mice will Play

Kelly is the BEST dad!!!! Which in turn, makes me not the COOLEST mom.

When I leave to go out of town Kelly makes the time with his boys

SO MUCH FUN!!!

They do everything from going out to eat, wrestling, staying up late, ice skating, ice cream, playing video games, watching TV most of the day, etc....

The boys don't even really miss me while I'm gone because they are having a blast with a Dad who doesn't have to go to work, or do anything for that matter!!

So, in an effort to be a "cool" mom, I had a few tricks up my sleeve while Kelly was away on his hunting trip.

I sat down with the boys and made a list of what they wanted to do with me. It looked something like this:

Go to McDonald's

Rent movies from Blockbuster

Have a sleepover

Stay up late

Pizza night

Play at the park

Get ice cream from Hot Licks

Play baseball and Swords

Read LOTS of books

We accomplished ALL of these things, and had lots of fun!

But, rest assured that I am still not as much fun as their Dad!

Well, here are some pictures of our movie night.

We started off the night with a Papa Murphy's pizza, celery /carrot sticks, and some soda while we watched our Blockbuster movie. (We use Netflix so it is a novelty to go inside a building and rent a movie).

After the first movie,I took the boys twin mattresses off of thier beds and made a GIANT bed in the middle of the living room. The boys each got to choose one candy from Wal-Mart that they would like to have for the movie night.

(I chose two)
So we got jammied up and started up the next movie while we pigged out on candy and popcorn.

It was LOTS of fun! I love hanging out with just me and my guys.
We stayed up until 1:30 watching movies, it was great and we were all exhausted the next day!

We also did a little bit of creating and painting. This is the boys spaceship and Chance is disguised as an alien.

As I am typing this post, I asked Hunter if that was fun just to hang out with Mom and do soooo many fun things and he said, "Not Really!"

Oh well, I tried.

This is just an addition of a little art project that Chance and I did for Fall.

I painted a tree and then let him sponge stamp some leaves.

It turned out beautifully, and he was proud of it.

Happy Fall!