Thanksgiving

This year we spent the Wednesday before Thanksgiving with my family and Thanksgiving day with the Waters. We had a lot of good food and fun with family.
At the Aird side my aunt Joan came to Utah to spend the holiday with her kids and my mom ended up offering to let them use her house so we had a joint Thanksgiving with a very large group of us. The food was fantastic and the conversation even better. At one point my cousin Cheryl started talking with her dad about anatomy and she mentioned that the skin on your elbow is called a wenus. Well, that got everyone rolling since half of us thought she said something else that rhymes with wenus. It was pretty funny! Heather was laughing so hard she was crying. That is one that we will probably talk about for years to come.
The Waters Thanksgiving was great too, but in different ways. It was only us, Robby's parents and Richard and Lisa's family so it was small, but after a big group the day before, a small one was nice. We had a great meal and enjoyed just hanging out afterward. I never think to take pictures at these things so lucky for me Richard took some.

Kim went all out with a turkey and a ham. It was so yummy!


The kids had fun watching movies with their cousins. They watched Madagascar 2 and Cars 2.

Sarah in her Little Turkey shirt.

The kids made thankful books again this year and had everyone sign them. That is a tradition that they look forward to I think.

I love being able to see so much family all in a couple days time. We are very blessed to live so close to so much family.

Sarah

I wish I would have gotten a better picture of Sarah yesterday. I was going to take a couple before church, but I ran out of time (yes, even though it was daylight savings and I had an extra hour) so I snapped a couple after church, but she was hungry and tired and didn't want to cooperate very well. Anyway, she looked really cute! I made a couple of bows to match her dress and I think they turned out really good and she just looks so grown up in her piggytails.

Halloween 2011

We had a great Halloween this year. It started on Friday when the kids had costume day at school. They were so excited to wear their costumes and have halloween parties at school.

Will wanted to be the Grim Reaper ever since he discoverd my mom had a big plastic ax thing he could use as a prop. Also, there was this awesome display of the grim reaper at our Walmart made out of Pepsi boxes. It had a carriage with moving wheels and everything! Anyway, I bought some material and kind of eyeballed it to make him a robe-like thing and checked out You-tube to see how to paint his face. I was excited to find some skeleton gloves for $1 which really added to the costume. I think it turned out pretty great! They weren't allowed to have weapons at school so this is what Will looked like on Friday.

Savannah wanted to be a pop star after she found a microphone, a feather boa and some awesome high-heeled black hooker boots. So this is what we threw together (minus the hooker boots. She's only 10!!)

We curled and spray painted her hair with red streaks, put a little makeup on and voila. (We are in serious trouble when we start letting her wear makeup for real) It was kind of funny when we were talking about how to do her hair. I was picturing an 80's type style with it a little back-combed and a little crimped and she squished up her face like I was crazy so we googled pop star hairstyles. As we were looking through the pictures she found one of a black lady from the 70's with a huge afro and she said "That! That is how you wanted to do my hair!" I thought it was so funny!
What she thinks I am thinking:

What I am actually thinking:



She turned out looking pretty cute.

Isaac had his choice of three different costumes that would fit him but ultimately he went with pirate.

He was a little disappointed that his makeup wasn't as elaborate as Will's, but I think he looked good.

On Saturday we carved our pumpkins. The kids all drew what they wanted and Robby and I did the carving.

Will and Savannah did scoop out a lot of the guts though.

We also drew on the little pumpkins to decorate them. This one is Sarah's.

Here is the finished product:

On Saturday night we had our ward trunk or treat, which is always a lot of fun. The YM and YW did a cake walk and a fishing pond for the kids and there was doughnuts and hot chocolate. I forgot to bring the camera, so no pictures.

On Monday we went trick or treating at Papa Aird's and Grandma Waters' offices. I tried to get a picture before we left, but Sarah was not too happy about posing. She was holding a bunch of toys right before we started taking pictures and when I took them away she was very upset. So this is the best I was able to get before we left:

Sarah was a sad, I mean cute little cat.

We got her to laugh for a second but unfortunately Isaac was in the bathroom so it was only three of the four.

All four, but Sarah is crying and Savannah is blurry. (How did I manage to get half of a blurry pic? She must have been moving.)

We went to Papa Aird's office first. We picked up Amberly's kids on our way down and the kids were glad to trick or treat with cousins.

Sarah was happy to see Grandma.

After trick or treating Papa treated the kids to hot chocolate and soda from the breakroom. They were very excited.

Clara was a cavewoman and Boston was a lumberjack.

Sarah didn't waste any time jumping into her candy stash.

Next we were off to Grandma Waters office for more trick or treating. The kids makeup was a mess at this point, but no one really cared except me.

Grandma also took the kids to the kitchen after trick or treating and they enjoyed someone's birthday cake and some chips and salsa.

After cake and chips we were happy to find that cousins Rebecca and Gabriel were there to trick or treat. Rebecca was Sacagawea (NOT Pocahontas) and Gabriel was Bumblebee from Transformers-but he wasn't too crazy about wearing his mask.

It's always more fun to have cousins to play with.

We had a great day and boy was I glad to be done with Halloween by Monday night!