Thanksgiving Fun

We had such a great weekend! My sister Emily surprised us from BYU and that was great. It was so nice having the extra help to get ready for the big meal, too. Em stayed with me and we cleaned and got ready for my moms birthday. Em made a death by chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting:

It was REALLY good and rich. YUM!


We also tried out some treats from Bakerella. These were good! Not as pretty as hers, but yummy.




Thursday was a great day, dinner went off well and even though it was a lot of work as usual I think it was a huge success! Here are the guys getting ready for some Turkey Bowl. They had a great time!



Emily and Sadie helping get things ready. I made homemade Cranberry sauce with cinnamon and mandarin oranges...it was really yummy!! I'll be doing thisn one again! Em and Sadie the crazy girls are frying up the giblets (GAG) to eat. BLEH!!



After dinner we played a few games of Settlers and my awesome MIL took the kiddos to see a movie while we cleaned up (and played more Settlers :) and then........ my mom and Em took all the kids up to Thatcher (Mark had to work Thurs night-BOO), SO I had the house all to myself. It was really what I needed to decompress a bit after it all. I had to do some popcorn work Friday morning then I headed up to Thatcher myself and helped my mom start getting Christmas set up. It was hard becasue we were all still pretty tired, and we kept getting distracted with our crafting :D but we at least go the outside done and the tree up, lighted and decorated. Heres a couple fun things we made:
Sign for Emily's dorm room

Fun Clipboards!!

Gift for a friends grandbabys room



I SO wish I could show all the other fun things I've been working on, but I can't spoil any Christmas suprises.
On the way home from Thatcher I stopped to show the kids these ADORABLE sheep and lambs. There were hundreds of little babies bleating and hopping around by their mommies. It was just too stinkin adorable!! We got back Sunday morning and it was back to reality. I actually did a little extra sleeping and recharging to get ready for the rest of the week which is shaping up to be really action packed.



Christmas Progress:
Presents for kids about 75% done and all wrapped and securely hidden.
Tomorrow I will be gathering supplies for a massive popcorn order and sampling I have scheduled for Saturday, and supplies for finishing up more projects that are orders and/or gifts.
Then I have a meeting, then.....DECORATING!

Holiday Prep and NEW MOON

Obviously, I've been in a bit of blogging slump. Really, a bit of a slump in general. However, I have made the concious decision to count my blessings!! I won't lie, it has been a daily battle! I put my tree up early with a Thanksgiving theme as a beacon and a reminder to remember my GOBS of incredible blessings and remember how blessed and fortunate I am every day. So far it has been working, and I had no idea how much I would need this glaring reminder! I love it, though, and it is helping me feel more festive and ready to tackle the holidays.

I was able to put this tree together with almost nothing I didnt already have, minus a few bushes on clearance at Hob Lob and donations from my mom :D Yep, that is a turkey on the top! It looks really pretty in real life :) I have loved having it up, and I will be making this a new part of our holidays!


My main focus this year is to hand make a lot of gifts, keep things minimal in order to keep stress minimal, and most importantly to do the really meaningful activities with my family that "make" the season, and I am really looking forward to all of the fun things we have planned that have become our traditions.

I am unusually ready for Christmas this year. Mark and I went today and got some of the stuff for the kids that are the must-haves, that the younger ones are counting on Santa to bring. I get nervous, because I want to be sure that Santa can find just the right thing. So far we are in good shape. We are also starting early in order to spread the spending out over a longer period of time since things are tight this year as usual. I basically will continue to trickle things in as I do hair/popcorn. I have been very blessed with lots of work over the last few weeks!

And of course, I have to recap NEW MOON!!!!

Honestly, I really want to go see it again!! LOL It was really good and we had so much fun! Sadie and I went with Casey and Hayley to the midnight show. I know the girls were loving a super special night out with their cool moms that let them stay out till 3 am! We got our seats at 8 so we went over to native and got some fries and killed some time. Our shirts were so cute, I can't believe we didn't take pics of them! I'll take one of Sadie in hers later I guess. Sadie and I put lots of Goth-y eyeliner (heh-sort of) and got all fixed up. It was a fun night and the movie being so good really made it awesome. Thanks Casey and Hayley, it was super fun! We'll do it again in June!

How adorable are these girls! SO grown up!!

Ahh! Mutant arm!!! LOL!!

Halloween Fun (?)

OKok, I will admit that this year was not my most fabulous Halloween. Meh. I completely forgot to take pictures of the kids!!! Sorry, Grandparents! I guess I won't be getting mom of the ear after this weekend after all. HA . Mabye I can get them back in their costumes for a photo op later. It dosen't help that last year was pretty stressful as well. I think what went wrong this time was that I got a big popcorn order on Thursday afternoon and I had a few hair appts (which I was grateful for) and it all just was a little much. I really only got....um....witchy when it was the hour or so before each event. For some reason trying to get the kids ready with their costumes was just super difficult this year. I helped with Coopers class party, we had trunk or treat on Friday night and I was rushing around at the last minute to get Cooper a mask, candy, Sadie was stressing over her costume so I made a Goodwill run that came up empty, stuff like that. Why does the tape always disappear just when its needed so desperately? Needless to say, I got a little "shouty". The kids were just bouncing off the walls, it got a little nuts. We did get to trunkortreat and by then things had calmed down and I got to be a chili judge and the kids had a great time. We had a cool car with extra pumpkin lights and spooky music, and everyone had fun, even me :D

Saturday I spent 7am till 1 baking, bagging, labeling and delivering popcorn and then I took a stab at doing some caramel apples, so I could mabye add some to some gift baskets. It was a test run, and I think I need a different recipe. The one I did is yummy, but didn't set up hard enough. The ones I made for the Ostrich Festival last year were amazing, so I think I need to just use that particular caramel.

After that we carved our pumpkins and get ready to go trick or treat, but of course my house and kitchen were completely demolished, so that was a bummer. Long story short, the pressure was on again after another loooong day and I accidentally got a little bit "shouty" again. OOps. Sorry family :D

Jason did the Scream pumpkin, I did Ava's "traditional" pumpkin. Thats what she wanted.

My brother Jason was over with Ava so that was a big help, he helped clean up after pumpkin carving (since it was his idea- he even went and picked up a couple extras for me) and he took the kids around to trick or treat, while Mark and I chilled at the house and handed out candy. Cade was actually not interested in trick or treating, but he had big plans. He laid by the sidewalk up to our door and scared all the kids. He had quite a few really good ones! Some people got so freaked out, even adults. It was great!! It was all his idea.

It looked reallly dark and creepy without the flash :D



At one point, he had about 10 teenage girls screaming their heads off and then later a bunch of older teenage guys. He did a great job. Sadie went babysitting after she had gone trick or treating (it was stake conference adult meeting) and had a great time.

Today I slept in, went to Stake conference, did massive amounts of dishes from last night, and took a nap. I think I was able to decompress pretty well. I'm looking forward to Turkey day already!! And I'm proud of myself I have already started my Christmas shopping, to try to avoid last minutes stress later, right??