Thanksgiving!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year with Heidi and Sam.  They arrived late Tuesday night and stayed all the way until Sunday!  It was so much fun.  We did a lot of cooking, a WHOLE lot of eating, played games, played legos with Eli (he was in heaven!), and enjoyed relaxing together.  Eli became super attached to Sam.  It was really cute.  They're both so great with the kids and were so helpful the whole time.  It was great!

I didn't take as many pictures as I should have, but somehow it still seems like I have a ton.  Wednesday we mostly baked and then went to the park for a bit in the afternoon.  I forgot to take pictures that day, and I didn't take any on Friday either for some reason, so these are from Thursday and Saturday!

Heidi preparing hor d'oeuvres and Eli eating them. :)

 Yummy!

 Happy people ready to eat!  Veggies with hummus and ranch, crackers and spinach artichoke dip, and the best ever Bruschetta with whipped feta and roasted red peppers (seriously, sooo good).

 And.....switch!  So we get everyone photographed. :)

Thanksgiving Feast!  For the record - I totally meant to change into a cuter shirt from my comfy-cooking-all-day-shirt, but I totally forgot.  Moving on...we invited a super cute couple from our ward over - Ben and Laura.  They just moved in over the summer, and Laura was due with her first baby on Monday (4 days after Thanksgiving) and they didn't have anywhere to go so we were glad they could come over!  We all had a great time.  We enjoyed the obvious turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and rolls, along with green beans, carrots, a super tasty salad, and some homemade jam and cranberry sauce.  Everything turned out delicious!  Hooray!

 Not sure why the color on this picture is so wacky, but here are our pies.  Laura brought the pumpkin and we made the Apple and Triple Berry (which was the best I'd ever made it, if I do say so myself.  It was a hit!  Even if it does look mangy in this picture)

 On Thanksgiving it was 60 degrees and then on Saturday it was freezing and we got our first snow!  All day long...so we set up Christmas!  It was very fun.

 Cuties.  Sam tried to do some studying.  I say tried because he mostly did it out in the family room with all of us, so there wasn't a whole lot of focusing going on. :)

 These boys love to color!

 The boys' tree is in the background.  It's made out of felt.  I made it at a Super Saturday Relief Society activity a couple weeks ago and I'm pretty proud. :)  They love it!  And they can pull off the ornaments and redecorate it as much as they want.

 The guys "studying" or something, with our cute tree in the background!

 I also made that wreath at the RS activity.  For a non-crafter I was quite pleased with myself. :)

And this was reading scriptures before bed one night.  Eli of course wanted to sit with Sam, his new best friend.

Like I said, we had a wonderful time!  Heidi and Sam were so incredibly helpful.  We were talking about who wanted to do what on Wednesday night (for the pre-feast crunch time of course) and after seeing how awesome and eager Sam had been doing dishes I asked if he would mind keeping up on some dish-washing since my kitchen is teeny and basically only has one little spot of usable counter space.  Well, he took that job seriously and earned himself The Best Dishwasher Ever award.  It was amazing.  He and Heidi then finished up all the dishes so quickly after dinner and I felt so spoiled.  Thanks you guys!  You know the way to my heart!  It was so nice to have enjoyed such a delicious dinner AND have a clean kitchen.  You guys can come every year! :)

So there you go.  I can't believe how much food was consumed in those few days, but it was pretty fun.  I love hanging out with my little sis and we just love Sam to pieces too!  We wish we didn't live so far away so we could do this more often, but we're excited to see them again after Christmas!

November

Hard to believe November is more than half-way over! (And this is my first post this month...) Thanksgiving is in less than a week and we fly out to CA for Christmas in less than a month!  Wow.

We haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary this month.  Jeremy's been busy with school, and the boys and I have been doing our thing.  It's been chilly most days, so we've been doing a lot of playing inside or running errands.  Nothing too eventful.

But the boys have been great lately.  They've been playing so well together and I love to hear them talking to each other.  Connor is talking up a storm and has become a little parrot, repeating everything we say.  It's so fun to hear his cute little voice, especially in contrast with Eli's low "manly" voice. :)  He's been picking up words so quickly, it's hard to believe.  He started out with the usual one syllable words, but he's now a master of many 2 syllable words (running, color, orange, etc.) and even a few small sentences.  My favorites are:

• I wunning! (I'm running)
• I'm fast! (while he runs)
• Weeed it! (Read it - about 50 times a day with a book in hand)
• I yike it (I like it)
• Y-okay? (Are you okay? - after anyone, including himself, coughs)

I need to sneak up on them to get a video sometime when they're playing because their little interactions are so cute.  Eli is such a talker and has a great imagination and they just go play in their room for long stretches of time now - mostly getting along - and it's amazing!  Eli has a million ideas of things to do and will ask Connor to do things ("Connor, can you do me a favor?") and Connor just happily responds "Okay!" or "Yeah!"  It's very sweet.  And it's so nice to be able to get something done for more than 2 minutes at a time!  There are still plenty of times when they don't get along - like when they're fighting over the same ball or the same hammer or the same tractor...you get the drift.  We're learning we need 2 of everything, but we're not quite there yet. :)

(Like our Thanksgiving decorations in the background? :)  The boys and I made hand turkeys one day and then we did the "thankful tree" for Family Night on Monday - each leaf is something we're thankful for.  I don't know what's gotten into me with the crafts! Also - their cute shirts are from the thrift store.  I've been "thrifting" lately and I'm totally hooked!  I've almost gotten all of their Christmas presents there - nice stuff - and I've spent very little.  Yessss!)

Anyway, I did manage to get a couple cute videos in the last few days but every time I try to load them, it doesn't work.  I seem to hear of a lot of people having trouble with videos on blogger these days.  Lame.  So I will try again some time (although I've been trying for 2 days already).  But here are some more pictures.  It always amazes me how something as simple as a big box can provide hours of entertainment.  Thank you Amazon Mom for sending that giant package of diapers! :)

And in case I don't blog again, I just have to say how excited I am for Thanksgiving!!!  I mentioned on my food blog that it's my favorite holiday.  It's true (Christmas is right up there too of course).  Good food, good friends or family, and no stressful gift-buying!  Heidi and her hubby Sam are coming Tuesday night and don't leave until Sunday and we're so so happy they're coming.  I'm planning a big feast even though we'll be a small group so it will be a great week of feasting and having fun!  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!