Thanksgiving was simply perfect this year. We had initially planned on camping on the coast Thanksgiving weekend. Because of that, we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday, because, why not? So I woke up Tuesday morning, I streamed my specially curated autumn playlist and set the table for our dinner:
Then I got to work in the kitchen. Slowly, kids joined me and soon the kitchen was bustling with busy hands preparing a delicious meal.
I never enlisted the help from my kids before, but quickly I realized this was a new tradition. I prepped myself the night before, recognizing if I included the kids, it would be a very different level of productivity and damage control, meaning I'd have to let go a little bit and be flexible. What I did not anticipate was how much fun we would have, and how much we would laugh together. Every dish we made, a child was involved in the preparation. This changed my entire outlook on the day, and I found what I used to enjoy as my "me-time" in the kitchen was easily surpassed by the value of the "us-time."
William and Matthew helped make the pumpkin cheesecake, the sweet potato casserole, and helped with the mashed potatoes.
Cate made the apple pie and the dinner rolls.
Johnny made the Jello, helped prep the turkey, make the green bean casserole, peel the mashed potatoes and make the stuffing.
We played Thanksgiving Bingo, Don't Eat Pete the Turkey, and watched Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving for the 20th time.
We we finally sat down to eat together, there was such a beautiful feeling in the house. My heart swelled with gratitude for the season of life I am in. We went around the table and shared what we were grateful for. I think something I love in particular about my growing family is the laughter. The kids are all developing such unique senses of humor, and it isn't uncommon for us all to crack up around the table.
Here is our gratitude board this year, some of the writing by Johnny is hard to see, but him and Cate got really into this year!
Right as we were taking out the turkey, we realized we needed to make a trip to Rexburg for John's charity. This shifted our plans significantly. As soon as dinner was through and we had our "Thanksgiving Moment." It as a mad rush as we excitedly prepped for our trip. Cate was on kitchen duty, Johnny helped me gather all the Thanksgiving decor so we could pack it up. I'm sure William and Matthew were being helpful somewhere, haha. John was prepping other things for the trip. Long story short, we cleaned up Thanksgiving, packed up fall, loaded a car for our trip, and decorated the house for Christmas in one swift night. John, who was our main driver the next day, went to bed early, as did Matthew. The kids were excited to get their Christmas teddy bears out of storage, and were quite invested in turning our home into a mini North Pole. We were mighty proud of ourselves. We finished at midnight and Cate, Johnny, William and I finally brought out the pies. We sat around the table complimenting each other on our baking skills. Then I read a few lingering Thanksgiving books to the kids as they literally fell asleep. It was a magical day. I am so grateful we were able to have this little celebration as a family before we took off to be with friends and family. I will cherish it always.
We started at the Hellmann's house, where we celebrated Thanksgiving. We also watched "The Forgotten Carols" (A tradition from John's family.) We also made nativities for families who lost their homes in the Almeda fire.
Next, we swung by John's parents' house. This is always a pleasure.
Everyone opened their Christmas presents.
We stopped by and saw Brit and Adam (and Shay, Kevin, and Spencer) for a bit. John took Adam's bike for a spin.
We stayed the night at my mom's house. I love her home at any holiday, there are so many details and when I walk in, it feels like being embraced by everything I cherish in my memories growing up.
We played some Christmas games.
We headed back home early the next day. It was a great drive and we worked hard to make a dent in our finish-the-Book-of-Mormon-by-the-end-of-the-year-goal. It was so nice to come home to CHRISTMAS. We wasted no time and Tuesday morning found us opening advent calendars, reading Christmas books, making candy cane hot cocoa, and playing Christmas music.
And this was a random picture William drew of me making cookies for William and Luke.
This was one of my favorite Easters yet. I feel like we got to do all the fun, festive things, but because of General Conference, it was a low key weekend. There was a lot of peace in my home- and heaven knows, I needed that!
By the time I went to bed Sunday night, I thought: what a perfect day and perfect celebration of Christ's atonement and resurrection.
I don't remember much about the details, just the over all feeling and wanted to at least throw some of these pictures on the blog so they aren't lost!
When easter falls on April Fool's Day, your dad may give you chocolate cover RAW eggs. I feel like this needed to be documented.
My house transforms as tacky paper hearts are taped to cupboards, and red and pink buntings are strung around our living space. Despite the fact that our home resembled a 2nd grade art project for a week, it seriously made me so happy every time I'd come downstairs, or every time the kids bound through the front door after school. Something about celebrating love makes me feel particularly grateful for all the people I love in my life.
I have such sweet, happy memories of Valentine's Days growing up. My mom would always make special "heart" breakfasts and lunches, and we'd wake up to our traditional Valentine's place mats. There would always be a little something special waiting for us. One year it was lunch tickets, so we could get "hot lunch" at school for two weeks. This was a huge treat. I realize in retrospect, it was probably a gift more for my mom, who typically made our lunches. As the designated lunch-maker in our home, this is a gift I would equate to a dream vacation. (Well, not quite, but you get the idea.)
As siblings, we would make fun, creative Valentine's for each other and exchange them. My mom sent me some pictures of Valentines she held on to so I wanted to post them here for documentation's sake.
Here is my place mat that was on the table every year. I seriously loved this tradition, it still makes me smile! (And miss my mom!)
One year, David made every one these heart people. He included things each person typically wore and enjoyed doing. Mine particularly makes me laugh. I was in 5th grade and was awkwardly in-between childhood and my teenage years. I was obsessed with music (probably N*SYNC?) but also still played with my American Girl doll. And yes, I absolutely loved my overalls. :)
The following few images are Valentines that I gave my family my Senior year of high school. (I'm not sure where David's is? I believe he was also serving a mission at the time!)
(James was serving a mission in Ukraine.)
I mean, they are totally cheesy, but they do bring back fun memories as I look at them now. I mean, isn't that the funnest tradition? I know it's cliche, but looking back: you really don't know how good it is in the moment until it's in the history. So although times have changed as we are all separated, leading our own lives; I will always treasure these sweet memories my parents cultivated among my family.
Now, back to Valentine's Day 2018! It was a fantastic day.
John and I gave each of the kids a little stuffed animal with a cute note like, "I think you're TURTLE"-y awesome, dude!" They also got a box of chocolates, and a prize bag of trinkets and more treats. Since I have a weird obsession with puns, I made "clever" little notes with everything I put in the bags.
"Valentine, I hope your day is all it's CHALKed up to be, because when it comes down to it, you're just WRITE. I want to be tic-TACtful, when I tell you how much your MENTOS me. You make my heart push-POP! So take NOTE and know you're MoM (m&m's) and SUGAR DADDY think you're a SWEETHEART."
This is where I understand why John thinks we have too much sugar in this house. #oops. Whenever John finds candy, he legit just throws it away, and it kills me a little inside. Now, as I start documenting yesterday, I realize he has a point. Haha. (I have a problem.)
For breakfast we had heart strawberry pancakes, strawberry yogurt (with heart strawberries!) and strawberry milk.
I had fun making their lunches, though I didn't snag a picture of them, dang it. Just rest assured: those kids unzipped their lunches to a plethora of pink, red and mushy love notes. I made John a special lunch with even more super awesome puns that I swear he takes for granted!
With his Salad,
"ROMAINE calm and know I love you from my head TOMATOES. I don't CARROT all who knows, I'm not a CHICKEN about my CHEESY feelings. You BROC-o-COLI know this, I mean, HONEY you MUSTard know this: I'm glad you're my Valentine. You BACON my heart go crazy."
with his yogurt:
"ALMOND it, I'm COCONUTs about you."
with his fruit:
"Sometimes I look at you and think, "I better never let this MAN-GO!"
You get the idea. I have good 'ole time the night before laughing at my own mom-jokes.
Caity's class was having a Valentine's box competition, and she came home a week ago with a very (VERY) clear vision in mind of what she wanted to do:
Her class is reading the Wild Robot by Peter Brown, and Caity wanted her box to look like ROZ. I tried to convince her down simpler routes, but she was determined and created strict blue prints (detailed with possible materials for each part of the robot, to size, to which glue she needed for which part, to possible door options.)
She drew everything, cut it all out, hot-glued most of it...John and I gave her ideas for how to implement some of her vision, and I helped saw the parts of the wooden boot (it was assigned as a family project), but she really was the brains behind everything. It was really fun to watch her determination bring out such great results. It was also a joy to watch her talents work together to produce an outcome she was proud of. It made me realize how much I need to do more projects like this with my kids.
Here is her final product:
Fantastic right? She won the contest which made her extremely happy, though it sounds like there were a lot of other fantastic ideas people brought in. I'm generally pretty noncompetitive by nature, so these kinds of things make me uncomfortable and a little embarrassed! Caity doesn't have that problem though- haha, she was pretty excited. I was more pleased, however; when she came home and asked me to cut the giant chocolate kiss prize into parts so she could share it with some of her classmates... I mean, what a sweetheart! I love her. I try to emphasize there is little you can do to determine outcomes in most competitions. You need to try your best, then be kind and gracious no matter the outcome, so it's nice to know that some of that sinks in.
Johnny came home the day before Valentine's Day and said, "I have to bring a special box to school too!" So we set to work on a monster box, and we had a lot of fun working together! He is so easy-going and flexible, it was a fun, creative project. When it was all over, he said: "I didn't tell the truth, my teacher didn't say we have to...I just wanted to. Sorry I wasted your whole day." My heart basically broke because he thought that spending the afternoon with him was a waste of my day. It made me evaluate how I portray things to my kids. It was a busy day and this was a hang up in what we needed to get done, but it was mostly a fantastic opportunity for me to step away from the craziness and have fun. I need to make sure I communicate those feelings better to my kids.
He was pretty pleased with his creepy/crazy monster.
Here is video I sent my mom Tuesday showing everyone's valentine's. It's kind of fun just to see the boys talking about everything. Caity was upstairs labeling her valentines.
In case you don't have time to watch the video, here's a picture of Matthew's Valentines:
GROSS, right?? He was SO excited about these. He could not be convinced to do Paw Patrol, or PJ Masks, or Pets or anything...he was seriously in love with these nasty eye-ball things...that he took to our church play group...and gave to our sweet little innocent friends. It was awesome. :-l
He was so please with his little self.
William, Matthew and I went to a little Valentine's Day Party at our church.
Matthew was so excited to be sitting with the big kids! (also...heart sandwiches make me so awkwardly happy.)
Not to gender stereotype here, but there was point when all the girls were at a table making a craft, and all the boys were pushing each other full speed across the gym. It was hilarious.
William was in heaven.
They were so excited to exchange Valentines. William started going through his stash at the end, and he was so disappointed when he looked in his bag and instead of his Batman Valentines, he found princess and fairy cards
We were so grateful for Grant bringing Spiderman Valentines- he saved the day.
The big kids came home after school, and dumped out their cards, showing me all their favorites. Johnny was showing me the ones he traded, which Caity found appalling: "Why would you trade a card someone hand-picked for you!?"
Then, the kids and I made chocolate covered strawberries! So fun.
Not to back-track, buuut: Here is a picture of what I woke up to that morning!
A sweet card, chocolates and beautiful bouquet of daisies. They were perfect and made me feel so loved.
Here is the card I MADE (proud of that) for John:
For dinner that night we made heart-shaped pizzas! It was a lot of fun, and definitely something I'd like to do more often.
Johnny is straight carnivore.
Caity
William (Ranch and cheese, always. Haha.)
John and mine had more vegetables, they were so yummy.
For dessert we had brownies and rice krispies with ice-cream.
Then, I took off to Young Women's. We were watching While You Were Sleeping and I basically died because I love that movie so much. I came home to some Snapchats from Brittany and Jalynn that made me laugh out loud. John and I ran our mile for the day, and then called it a night.
It was such a good, fun, happy day.
Granted- for breakfast today I made like straight green dad-style smoothies and eggs for the kids so they could get some sort of nutrition in their bodies after a day like yesterday, they were definitely sugar-hung over this morning!
The house is messy, we're sugared out, the kids barely made it to school, and Matthew and William are still in pajamas...but we are happy, I think we need days like yesterday to conscientiously focus on the love we feel and often take for granted.
