Thanksgivings Part 1 and 2

Thanksgiving this year was different, but oh so fun! To start, after our Bubble Run earlier this year I had decided I'd like to do more 5K fun run things, but I didn't want to pay so much for them. I knew our city had a Thanksgiving one, but when I found out it was at 8 AM and that's prime parade time I knew I wasn't going to do that, but I wanted to run so I opted to do it on our treadmill at home.

We started the actual day with a big breakfast (French Toast) for fun and then turned on the parade. Larry got up and started cooking right away while I cleaned with the parade on. Unfortunately, we hit our first big snag of the day when I started smelling something off and then Larry noticed it and opened the oven saying "OH CRAP!" and that's when we realized we had left some tupperware in the oven the night before (the kids didn't finish their dinner so I put it in there so the cats didn't eat it while we were out) and it had ALL melted all over the oven. This took about an hour out of our day to clean (I was going to have Larry clean floors that morning since I did all the other cleaning, but since he was busy cleaning the oven I did the floors real quick), luckily Larry doesn't get as crazy stressed out as me so he just got it cleaned and moved on with the morning.

For our dinner, we decided to do Costco's dinner (we've tried a few different places that offer the premade dinners that we just cook up and have really liked them) so we were excited to try theirs since it had all the things - Larry just wanted to make deviled eggs and cornbread separate. 

While dinner was cooking, I was watching the Packers game (they won and it was awesome!) and then we put on the Cowboys game (I told Larry even if the Packers lost, as long as the Cowboys beat the Chiefs it'd be a good day of football), I didn't have high hopes for them to win, but when they did it was AMAZING! We were all rooting real hard for that game, it was a great day for football! 

Unfortunately, the dinner wasn't as great as we were hoping. Some of it the taste was just a little different. Some of it was a weird consistency (The turkey was sweet, the stuffing was over seasoned, the gravy looked like apple sauce, and the rolls were VERY white, like they were ALL flour). It was edible, but it wasn't my favorite dinner we tried, so that was a bummer. Luckily, the eggs were amazing! The desserts (apple cobbler and pumpkin pie) were all good too, so that was nice.

After dinner, we played Bingo with Marie for mini gifts she brought that the kids all loved. It's so fun to add that to our Thanksgiving traditions. And once that was done, we got the girls ready for their sleep over at the hotel Marie and Jim got for the weekend. They had an indoor pool so they got to go swimming that night and they loved it.

On Friday, we met up with them at Thanksgiving Point, we got tickets for the Carousel, The Museum of Natural Curiosity, and then had some snacks on our way over to the Jurassic Jungle. It was SUCH a busy day (and my legs were very tired from my run the day before), but we all had so much fun! After we finished all that we went home to relax.

Today, we had Thanksgiving part 2 with Mom. It is Will's birthday (so I was already planning on going over at some point this weekend) and since Mom didn't get to see any of her kids she wanted to have us all over for a dinner. She made all the yummy sides and a MUCH better turkey than the one we got. Andy and Rachel came over, we ate, we visited and laughed, we gave gifts. It was nice. We even brought some deviled eggs, because we ate all ours quickly and wanted an excuse to make more, haha.

The only down side is Pierce woke up feeling icky today so he's been VERY docile and sleepy (he says his head and throat feel sick). He even fell asleep on Mom's tile floor (not the carpet floor, not the couch, not the ultra comfy chair, but the hard, tile floor). So hopefully he'll feel better soon. Other than that,  it's been a very nice Thanksgiving weekend.  I think the kids are all ready to go back to school now, haha.

Memory Maker: North Pole Express

Today has been one of the greatest Memory Maker moments we've had this year. I've been wanting to do this North Pole Express train ride for a while, but we've always had little babies that I wasn't sure would be able to handle the LONG drive out to it or I wondered if it would be worth how much it cost to go or it was booked up (because it books so so quickly). This year, it felt like the right time to go and I got tickets back in June so it was great timing!

As a note, the kids talk a lot about if the Santa's they visit are the real one. We talk a lot about how they feel about it (because I want to keep the magic alive as long as possible so I'm not about to tell them what to think or feel, but I will encourage more fun, magical thinking whenever they ask) and when we did our Santa picture this year, we stayed nearby for a while so the kids could color the fun coloring pages they had, but I noticed Lucy was watching the Santa a lot while he talked to the photographers (I tried to distract her, but she was being SUPER observant) and later she mentioned she didn't think it was the real Santa because he was so fat, haha (I did tell her Santa is supposed to be fat according to the stories)

So we tell the kids we're going to this North Pole Express ride and get them all hyped up, we even read what the ride includes (it said cookie, hot chocolate, a mug, and a gift from Santa - which I told them would probably be a candy cane so don't get too excited) and everyone was pretty excited to go. The car ride there didn't even take too long, but maybe that was because most of the kids slept and Cara read her Harry Potter book, so it was nice. 

We got there just in time to get our (very ornate and beautiful) tickets and they immediately started loading our car (which was very close to the front) and we got to have 3 benches to ourselves (though we really only needed 2, but we traded off who got to sit on the 3rd one) and we got visits with the elves on the car and the lady who was "hosting" our car was nice. We had perfect seats, they were always stopping by us to talk and announce things, so that was nice.

We got to sing and dance in the aisles, which our kids didn't do much of, but they still tried to make it fun. The cookies were really good (I got Larry's since it was chocolate chip) and the hot chocolate was good (after it cooled down a bit, which took some time). Then we got to the "North Pole" where Santa was out waving at our train. I will say I wish I had gotten tickets for a day that had snow, but there's no way to know which day will be best when you have to book so early. 

After the North Pole, we stopped and Santa came on the train to tell us about our gifts, which was NOT candy canes, but a bell from his sleigh. He mentioned we need to put it on our tree, and then ring it right before bedtime on Christmas Eve, which signals him to start loading up our gifts, and then immediately go to bed so he can stop by our house. He looked so legit I mentioned to the kids "I'm not sure, but he seems pretty real" and they ALL lit up and felt like he must have been real. Lucy even said "yeah, because he has a real beard!" haha. Gwen mentioned she can't wait to go back to school to tell her friends she saw the real Santa. The bell was really cold so I told Cara it had to be cold, it came all the way from the North Pole! She was so excited.

After we got the gifts, Santa came by for us all to get some pictures with him, and it was just so memorable and sweet. The kids all loved it and I loved that it really ignited the magic in their minds. They all said they want to do it again, but in pajamas next time. I felt it was SO special I don't know that I'd want to do it again. Maybe when Pierce and Lucy are a bit older so it can be magical for them to (it was for Lucy, but I'm sure Pierce didn't really understand what was going on). 

This has been a very great Christmas Season already and we're not even in December yet!

November Activities

-We did our annual family pics on the 1st through Camera Shy. I've always loved going to them, but this time it ended up costing me WAY more money than usual because they forced me to buy a prints package and tricked me with the options (they only offered 2 and the cheapest one was $500!). I'm glad we at least got cute pics and a new canvas out of it, but I doubt I'll be using them again. Pierce was NOT into it so that was a struggle, but I'm not surprised and we did get some smiley-ish ones of him. Finding outfits was SO hard (I had some picked out and just kept changing who was wearing what or what would go well together. I bought TONS of online outfits since I couldn't find anything in stores), but what we found some that worked well enough (nothing that we ended up with is what I started out with though, haha)

-After pictures, we grabbed some lunch from Subway and had a "picnic" at Murray park with Wilsons (Don, Tracy, Tori, Tanner, Lilly, Eli, and Chloe). The kids had a lot of fun at the two play grounds. Poor Tracy was sick with possible food poisoning. Eli and Chloe don't talk much and left early, but it's good to see him happy. We had lots of fun chit chatting with the rest though. We ended up staying for quite a few hours (which always seems to happen with them).

-I started Christmas shopping on the 2nd (and got one whole family done right away) and then went about every Sunday this month. I also went to the Christmas show with Mom on the 15th and got some good stuff for the kids there (I definitely have to go there every year, there are so many good things). I am really wanting to be intentional with my gifts, not just grab stuff I think someone/anyone will like and figure it all out later (I also need to limit the sugar items for the kids...they still have Halloween candy for crying out loud). Additionally, I had the kids pick out present ideas from Amazon's toy catalog to make their wish lists, I figured I'd buy them 3-4 of what they ask for and then the rest will be things I think they'd like, or could use, plus some clothing items. We did hit up an actual mall one weekend, which was great because I FINALLY found some Labubu's for the girls (which they've been begging for). While we were there, we let the kids play in the play area and ran into Andy and Rachel (random!). I finished the bulk of my shopping the week of Thanksgiving - I feel SO head of the game. I've been wrapping a handful of gifts each night to Hallmark/Christmas movies, which is the best (I also love having my own room to store the gifts this time!) and it's nice to not feel overwhelmed with so much wrapping at once and I feel I've forgotten the things I started wrapping so it'll be a nice surprise wen Christmas morning comes!

My biggest shopping day

-I had the unfortunate experience of my computer crashing...HARD earlier this month. I was checking on a fun event for the kids and the site had me verify I wasn't a robot, but it made me paste something in my run screen (which I did so fast and didn't realize what I was doing until I had already done it). I had Larry run a scan and it said it found nothing, but he looked it up and found it can be harder for scans to find so we did a reset and it just wouldn't start back up (see my sad shot below). My biggest concern was pictures and my documents, but luckily all of that was on my One Drive (or Amazon Photo Cloud thing) so once I got a computer we could load it all back up. My regular computer is old, but works amazing and I really didn't want to buy a new one (plus we can't find any that are the same size) so Larry did a BIG reset on this computer and it took basically all day long on the 8th to get up again. I didn't love that, but glad to have mine back! Hackers are the devil!

-Our neighbor's son (Jason) was in a play at Lehi community theater the night of the 13th and they invited me and the older girls to come to see it. It was at a fun, small theater, it was a musical play where some kids were imagineers teaching the other kids about how to make dreams come true. Jason had a solo, singing Lion King's "I just can't wait to be king". It was such a fun and cute play and totally made me want to sign the kids up for this (if they want. If this existed when I was a kid I might have done it).

-Gwen got to have her 1:1s. Larry took her out to Crumbl, on the 18th, while I walked Costco with the rest of the kids (we went out to dinner together in the area so it made more sent to drop us off at Costco while they did their thing). I was doing Christmas shopping and then he surprised us so one of his gifts got ruined (oh well). He then took the kids and I grabbed some stuff for them that I saw. On the 20th, I took her to Wal Mart. She got a lot of birthday money so she got to buy a watch she REALLY wanted and then I got her some new PJs that came with an eye mask (she was really excited about). It was another dinner out so Larry walked Wal Mart with the other kids while I took her so it was kind of different than usual, but she got some goodies so she was happy.

Costco shopping made comfy

-We got our annual Cabela's Santa pic done on the 26th. I love doing this and Larry's starting to like it too. In fact, we booked a breakfast with Santa event next month and I asked Larry if we should even do Cabela's since we'll probably get a picture at the breakfast, but he said we still should do the Cabela's one so we have it to add to our stack of other ones haha. The kids are starting to put together that the Santa's we visit aren't the real deal (there are WAY too many opportunities to meet him, I can't fully blame them for being suspicious). We also almost lost the picture this year (Larry accidentally left it behind), but luckily he went back and found it quickly.

It's crazy how much the kids have grown
Since we started this tradition!

-And my favorite pics of the kids:

Cara wearing Pierce's tiny shoes

He may be older, but he'll still nap on me
Once in a while

Football Bet Days

So back (VERY back) when the Packers played the Cowboys (which doesn't happen very often, but is an exciting day in our home), Larry thought it would be fun to make a bet out of it. I don't particularly like betting, but he assured me we could make it a fun one (Packers normally beat the Cowboys so I felt it was more in my favor, however, they've been a bit iffy this season so I was worried about jinxing it) and after MUCH discussion I finally agreed, we decided whoever won got another "day to do whatever they want" sort of thing. Then game day came and it was SO intense and ended...in a tie. I felt it meant we both lost, but he thought it meant we both won, so we both got a day of whatever we wanted. 

Ignore my typo...whoops!

Larry got to have his back on the 8th and he chose a trip to Malad for lottery ticket, of course. We were planning on leaving early in the day, but then I found out there was sports place opening up nearby that was throwing a "Kpop Demon Hunters camp" thing and he was nice enough to push his drive up till after that. The came was supposed to last 2 hours, but it ended up taking me an hour to find the dang place, but they still had fun and the place credited me with $20 to use towards a future class, so that was nice! I also had planned to let him sleep in that morning, but he ended up waking up before me (saying he had a dream that woke him up early and he just couldn't get back to sleep). I was able to let him relax while I had a very productive morning, I fully did dishes, took down and organized our Halloween decorations, I organized and put up our Fall and Thanksgiving stuff. My computer had a nervy b and he was updating it so I was able to let him game and do that and I took care of the kids. They really wanted to play in our crunchy leaves out front, so I was able to let them do that while I put up our front porch blow up turkey and, while I was at it, I swept up all the dust and dirt off our porch...it's amazing how much better it looks with that cleaned up. Because of the late start, by the time we picked up the girls (who had to show me their cute routine they learned at the camp), Malad ended up being a quick up, grab tickets, eat dinner (at a very disappointing restaurant), and head home sort of thing. We wanted to let the kids play on the playground, but it was all blocked off, so they could only stretch their legs at dinner (the next day they told me they only wanted to go places if it wasn't a long ride to it, haha). So the day didn't go perfect (we didn't win any big lottery jackpot or anything), I think he still had fun, and I sure got a lot done, haha.

For my day, I got to do it today (we've had a VERY busy couple of weeks, so this was the first chance I got) and I chose Kneaders for breakfast, then I went out and did BIG christmas shopping (almost all completely done within a couple hours), followed by a yummy Zupas for lunch and then head home to eat and relax for a minute. We then headed to the mall to walk around before we went to (the part I was really excited to try out) our Immersive Game Box reserved time slot. I had heard about this forever ago and I had been DYING to try it out, so I figured it would be so fun to do it today. We had so much fun doing that, Pierce was a sour puss and just sat in the corner, but we just let someone else use his hat/marker thing to do his turn so everyone would get an extra turn here and there. It was a bit different than I was expecting, but we chose two of the games (one treasure hunt one and one floor is lava one...which we kept running into each other during...the rooms feel pretty small with that one, but the treasure one was fun...pretty classic). I had heard about the Christmas Tree lighting at Traverse while I was out shopping, so I decided we should hit that up. It was so cute, they had a Gingerbread Village up to walk through, the kids got a candy cane treat, they sang some songs (basically like caroling, but it was sing-a-long style) and then a countdown to the tree lighting. We rushed out of there after that to go to Golden Corral for dinner (a family favorite), which had some of their best food this time!

I tricked Pierce to get a full family shot haha

Both days ended up being a hit, so I guess I'm glad Larry convinced me to do the bet and that it was a win-win. However, it sure made the game a lot more stressful, so I doubt I'd bet on that one again (maybe a different game that doesn't have my team in it, haha).

Gwen is Seven

Our Gwen is now 7 and we've been making a lot of 6-7 jokes a lot this week (I sure hope we get that reference in the future). For her party, which we did on the 15th, she decided she wanted to go to the Airborne that she went to for a birthday party earlier this year. We let her invite 7 friends and most of them actually showed up (5 out of 7 isn't too shabby!). 

I accidentally smudged the B when lifting the
Hat spinner toy :(

We had a good plan for the day, we got there, started with some play, ate some REALLY yummy pizza, did the Happy Birthday song and ate cake, and then opened presents. Then we had more time for even more play. The only issue for the day was the cake we ordered is not what we got, we ordered from the new Wal Mart, closest to our house, but when Larry went to pick it up they didn't have the order, but they offered us a white cake (just white, not anything else) with some decorations and the Harry Potter hat toy they were supposed to have on the original cake. It wasn't great, but as far as hiccups go, it could've been worse. 

She had so much fun with all her friends and we realized this was her first friend party she's ever had, so I'm glad it was such a hit for her, because she very much deserves such a happy day for her birthday.

Cara and Lucy even wrapped up some
"presents" for her to open haha

This past Monday she had her checkup, which went really smooth and she passed everything with flying colors. She had a guy doctor and afterwards I asked her if she was okay with that and she told me she didn't care and that it was up to me if we should switch to a girl doctor, haha (she's just so low key and chill!).

For her actual Birthday day, she chose donut holes, tapioca pudding, and OJ for breakfast. The school did a birthday lunch earlier this month, on the 10th, so I brought her a McD's happy meal for that. Her teacher was out on her actual day, but assured me she'd leave notes for the sub because apparently she likes to decorate their chair and give them a special birthday hat and really make them feel special. She loved that. She brought some unicorn cake sticks for her treat to school and had dance that night that she brought candy canes in for. We did her height check that night and found that she's practically where Cara was at 8 already!

Since she had dance on her birthday day, we had to move her dinner to tonight. She chose McDonald's, again (which Larry hated so he grabbed himself some Betos, which he was able to drop us off, go get his food, come back and eat it all before we even got ours...so much for fast food!). We made sure to get our ice cream there and did our "reasons why we love Gwen" as well. I think she felt very special (she practically got a whole week of celebrations, haha).

____________________________________

My special and amazing Gwen! 

You are officially SEVEN and though I know that is your chronological age, you are very wise beyond your years. You are such an observant intellectual young lady. You are always watching things and telling us when you've figured out how and why things work. You love to be so silly and make silly faces for no reason at all. You love to tell jokes and make us laugh.

You still have the most amazing hair and are so freaking friendly, nothing seems to bother you (for the most part, you might get a little worked up when you can't do something like open a bottle, but you're learning you just need to ask and then that problem is solved). Speaking of learning, you seem to like learning things all the time. I think people underestimate you and I think that will prove to be such a strong trait as you grow up, you'll constantly be surprising people with your whit.

I also love how much you love to come up with your own jokes. They are always such goofy jokes. You are so funny when you come up with names for new animals or things you want to keep. A monster will be "Monstie". The stuffed Christmas Trees will be "Chrissy" or "Christmassy". And you seem to LOVE coming up with names for things, haha. 

You are such an easy going person. I joke that's why you get the middle child treatment, you don't have strong opinions about things, you're not a picky eater (in fact, you seem to love trying new things), you don't get overly emotional. I do my best to still make sure to find stuff that will make you happy and feel loved because you are, loved, very very much!

I hope you always stay confident and goofy. I hope you make friends just by being you forever and never let anyone dim your silliness. Always find the light side of life! And I very much hope you always feel loved and special from your dad and me, forever and a day. No one could every replace our sweet Gwen Gwen.

Lucy's First Field Trip

I cannot say enough how much I absolutely love being able to go on field trips with my kids. My mom never got a chance to do that (not that I think it was an option, but if it were, she couldn't do it) so for me to have the option is one of my favorite things!

So when Lucy's teacher sent an email saying they were planning a field trip to the aquarium and asked if anyone would come along to chaperone, I immediately responded (just in case she went with "first come, first serve" choosing method) and told Lucy I was going to try and come along, which made her excited.

Today, she loved when I went to drop them off, but walked to the play area with her and stayed with her. Going into the class, I was happy I got a group of girls (girls tend to be easier) and one of the girls had a mom and older sister who came with so I kind of had a backup chaperone with my group. This ended up being nice, because it turned out one of the girls was a bit of a wanderer and kept walking off, so she made it harder to keep track of all of them. 

The bus ride over was funny, a lot of the kids were nervous since it was their first bus ride and they weren't sure how to feel about no seat belts (it's kind of nice to see so many parents push safety in cars on their kids). One boy, sitting behind me, kept yelling out "oh shoot" when we first started leaving, haha. And one of the girls in my group asked that I send a picture of her on the bus to her mom (turns out the girl asked how the mom would know if she was safe on the bus and the mom told her if she needed she could have her adult send a picture of her).  It was sweet when everyone started singing "The Wheels on the Bus" so loud and then at one point I heard a good amount of them singing "Golden," haha.

One thing that made me nervous was when one of the other chaperone's mentioned her son was just out the day before with strep and there were A LOT of wet coughs all over the bus (including one girl who was obsessed with Lucy and kept grabbing her hand and wrapping herself around Lucy so I figure we're for sure bringing something home!)

This trip to the aquarium (because you may recall, I previously did an aquarium field trip with Cara last year) was a bit more chaotic. Instead of us just eating lunch whenever, they had a set time. Most of the kids are used to a morning snack that they didn't get this time, so the kids were all very hungry and didn't love having to wait. Luckily, we were able to distract them enough to last until the lunch time (we were able to cross off 3 areas before lunch). After eating it got crazy. There was another field trip there and their lunch was right after ours, but we couldn't leave the lunch area without a worker walking us to the building and so we had to all wait in one area while the other group went to their lunch and then a worker could escort us over, but it got SUPER messy (even the employees seemed stressed out). BUT after all that, we got to go back to finish our last two areas.

The last two areas were really exciting for the kids because they kept asking where the sting rays were and so we hit that right before the sharks (which is my favorite part). I think seeing the rays was the favorite part of all the kids, even though they couldn't really reach them, haha. Another mom of one of my kids showed up right before we left so that was nice for her (also gave me the idea I could always use PTO and show up at the field trip spot on my own in the future if I didn't want to chaperone or if I wanted to bring other kids with me). I'm glad I got to go and be with Lucy (I hope she liked it, but I was quite distracted). 

The bus ride home was a bit more calm, I sat with one of the quieter girls in my group and her and I played A LOT of Rock, Paper, Scissors (to a point where I forgot what my options were, the words weren't fully making sense anymore haha). I was bummed I couldn't check Lucy out of school at that point, but the teacher mentioned they were going to go do computers so I figured she should stay. Luckily, she seemed excited about that so she wasn't too bummed out to stay. 

I still look forward to more of these in the future! I think Lucy might have another one this year, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to go with on that, I only plan enough PTO to go on one field trip per kid, so we'll see if that happens or not. (Now that Gwen has had her field trip, I just saved enough for Cara, if she has one this year).