Family Photo Shoot

My sister-in-law needed a recent family photo. We don't have a single picture with only our family in it since we had our family photos taken last fall. (that would be over a year ago) So I decided we would have a little impromptu photo shoot in our family room. Well Brock, Mikele, Kassie and even Jason were cooperative. Allie on the other hand had her own ideas of how this would work. The kids were sitting along the wall waiting for everyone and she decided that would also be where she was sitting for the pictures. Of course that didn't work very well because she is the smallest and needed to be in the front.

So we tried to get her to want to sit on Jason's lap by making her jealous of Kassie.

Ya she didn't care.

Then Allie would go play with her toys or wander around the room until she heard the timer beeping on the camera. Then she would come running over and find her spot.  After the picture was taken she would get up and go check out the picture on the back of the camera with me and then we would start the whole thing all over again.

Luckily we did end up with a cute photo of the whole group looking at the camera and almost everyone is smiling.  My Mom always says that family pictures must be really important or they wouldn't be near as hard to pull off.  I totally agree!

Thanksgiving

(Carrot Wars)

  This year we were at my parents house for Thanksgiving.  The whole family was there which made for a full, fun and noisy house!  The food was of course FABULOUS! We would expect nothing less from my Mom.  We enjoyed your traditional feast on Thanksgiving day and continued to be spoiled with yummy food the rest of the weekend including homemade donuts! I love homemade donuts!!

Allie is waiting for the Thanksgiving feast to begi

How else do you handle a room full of people with more then half under the age of 10?

  The women went on their annual black Friday shopping trip.  This year we actually started at Walmart on Thursday night at midnight and then AnnMarie, Jenny and I drove straight to Idaho Falls.  We then slept in Jenny's van in the Staples/Target parking lot.  Why did we do that? Well we figured we would get more sleep that way then driving back to my parents house sleeping at home getting up extra early driving back into town and then to Idaho Falls.  Jenny and I actually stayed pretty warm in the sleeping bags we brought.

   On Saturday we went to an indoor soft play fun park.  We all had a blast and worked off a few pounds.  They had a big foam pit that you could jump into from the second story balcony.  If you got over the fear of jumping in then you had to figure out how to swim through the foam squares to the side of the pit while being pelted with foam squares.  They also had trampolines to jump on and this big gymnastic mat to play on.  We had a few exciting games of dodge ball that the men dominated at.

  They also had this big rubberband thing that four people would get in and then the two people across from each other would run and switch sides stretching out the rubber band and flinging the other two people towards each other.  It was CRAZY and dangerous.  Krissy did a great flip landing on her back and Jason collided with Mat and bruised a few ribs.

   We were suppose to be driving to Boise Saturday afternoon to meet our newest niece and cousin Rachel but because of the weather we didn't make the trip.  Kassie was in tears about not going!  Hopefully we will get to see them soon.  Like most people we endured a slow drive home Sunday.  The roads weren't to bad for us.  Our delays were mainly caused by accidents that slowed the traffic down to one lane.  Our normal 2 hour drive took us about 3 hours.  It could have been much worse.  We are so Thankful that we made it home safe.  We are especially thankful for my parents for all the time that was put into making our Thanksgiving weekend so enjoyable.

A "Bee" Greatful Packmeeting

The Thursday before Jason and I left town for our Anniversary get-a-way, Brock had pack meeting.  The new Cub Master who is in charge of pack meetings is GREAT!!! She has such fun den meetings planned for the boys.  This month she did a "Bee" Thankful theme.  We wrote on the back of a bumble bee what we were thankful for and then put it on the hive.  The cub scouts were blindfolded and had to get their bee as close to the hive as possible.

The boys also received the awards and we did those goofy scout cheers.  Gotta love the scouting programs!

Finally for refreshments the kids made turkeys with an apple and gumdrops.

Kassie's Birthday

Kassie turned 4!!! Crazy girl is just growing up too fast! She is so gracious and fun.  She is full of spunk and is very animated.  I would love to spend a few minutes in her brain to better understand how it works and why she thinks and says the things she does.  Here is an example of a conversation I had with her on her birthday.

Kassie: "Mom, so when am I 4? Am I 4 now?"
Me: "Yes, Kassie you are 4 now."
Kassie: "Ok, so can I stay home by myself now?"
Me: "No!"

We had a full day planned for Kassie. Well honestly Kassie planned a full day for herself.  The night before Kassie's birthday, Jason and I filled balloons and covered the floor of her bedroom.  When she woke up she sat up in bed, noticed all the balloons and said "WOW, that is a lot of balloons!"

   We had a friend birthday party with 8 adorable girls. Kassie was very involved in the planning process of her party.  She picked the activities, decorations and treat.  Our theme was Unicorns and so we had a unicorn pinata, we played musical chairs, charades, and had a unicorn mane relay race.  (we had two teams and they raced to add the "mane" to the unicorn).  We frosted cookies and had hats because according to Kassie you have to have hats at a birthday party.  After all of the activities Kassie opened her very generous birthday presents and then the girls played on the swing set until the parents arrived to take them home.

 

Photo-op by the unicorns with their new multi-colored manes.

 

The girls decorating their sugar cookies.  Kassie picked out the hats, paper products and treats for her friends.

 Pinata Time!  Kassie of course picked out the Pinata and the toys and candy to fill it with.  We broke our stick twice before finally breaking open the Unicorn.

Kassie LOVED her presents! Thank you to all of her friends for being so generous!

  After the friend party we took a short break before starting part two of the festivities.  Kassie chose (shocker I know) homemade Macaroni and Cheese for her birthday dinner.  We have had the same dinner on Kassie's birthday for the last 4 years.  This year we did upgrade from the box assortment to homemade.  After dinner Kassie opened her presents.

 Kassie received new doll cloths from Grammy.

 Jason and I gave Kassie new tinkerbell sheets and a new comforter for her new twin size bed.

 Grandma Murdock gave Kassie this new super soft tinkerbell blanket.

and Nana Hobbs gave Kassie $20 to buy something she wants.

 After presents it was time for cake and ice cream.  I was laughing at Kassie because she blew out 1 candle at a time.  Kassie, of course, helped me decorate her cake the night before because we could not leave it to today because today was her birthday. Her ice cream flavor of choice is Neapolitan. 

 I think everyone enjoyed the cake and ice cream.

Kassie got a bonus gift this year.  While we were at Macey's picking up some last minute items she found this cute unicorn and asked really nicely for it.  How do you tell the birthday girl "no"?  So we came home with it.  All the kids got a little goofy riding the new unicorn.

What is not to love about this adorable face! Kassie is such a joy to have in our family.  She is so entertaining and keeps us on our toes all the time.  She is constantly dancing and fluttering through life.  She is so logical and once she has thought something through and decided how it should work good luck trying to change her mind.  She is a keeper!