So Thankful

We had such a fantastic Thanksgiving.  My entire family came to Rockwall.  It was so nice not to have to drive all the way to Spearman.  I did miss seeing Britt's family and my grandparents, but Christmas is only a few weeks away.  This was my first year to host and my first time ever to cook turkey and dressing.  I handed the hard part over to Britt and he fried the turkey and it was absolutely delicious.  I tried to copy Britt's mom's fantastic recipe for dressing and I think it turned out pretty good.  Now that you know it all turned out ok I will tell you how Thursday morning started out.  It was time to start cooking the turkey and when I took it out of the fridge it was still frozen.  Yikes!  It had been thawing for days.  We did the quick thaw method and soaked it in the sink.  Then Britt had the fryer all ready to go and it started pouring rain.  We moved it into the garage and just prayed we wouldn't have a big fire.  After all our morning drama everything turned out just fine and we had a great Thanksgiving dinner.  It was so nice to have everyone together.

Fun Fall Days

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous lately.  It's a little chilly but so enjoyable.  We have been able to spend so much time outside playing.  If it is a little too windy for Gracyn, I  have been able to leave the doors open and keep her in the playroom while the big kids play out front.

 Gracyn is such a happy baby these days.  Excuse the bad hair.  I never notice how crazy it looks until I see it in a picture.  Some lady told me she looked like she had a mohawk.  She has rubbed it nearly bald on both sides.

 Garrett and our neighbor raked up all the leaves and buried each other.  I thought the goggles were a good idea.  :)

 With the time change we have been getting ready for bed so early.  We have been able to spend some time playing games before it is actually time to go to bed.

 This is random, but my kids (mainly Garrett) thought these would look great on the door.  We turned some free address labels into stickers and he thought since they had our address on them we should tape them to the front door.

 When Garrett was two, the first thing he would do when we went outside was run around in a circle yelling, "it's a beautiful day!"  The tradition has stuck and now he has passed it on to Gaitley.  Silly kids!

 Having fun in the gator and then the wagon.

Now I am off to enjoy an evening with just my baby girl.  Britt took the big kids to watch our nephew play football and they are spending the night.  So far my free time (her nap time) has consisted of blogging and cleaning the windows.  Fun times!

Family Pictures...Enough Said

Last Friday night we got the kids all dolled up and met our friend Allison out at White Rock in an attempt to capture the perfect picture of our little family.  The kids looked adorable in their red outfits and we had the candy ready for bribes.  We were going to meet her around 5 which meant we needed to leave our house a little after 4.  Of course, this is the day that Gaitley needed to take a really long nap and we had to wake her up in order to make it on time.  Well, she never got in a good mood and pretty much cried the entire time we were taking pictures.  It was a disaster!  She didn't want to walk and wouldn't get down and had red, watery eyes in all our pictures.  In the few that she was smiling, Garrett wasn't or Gracyn was not happy.  We left the photo shoot and felt completely exhausted.  Poor Allison!  I do think we got one good shot out of the 300 she took.  I guess one is all you need though.

Now it is time for the fun part; picking out the perfect Christmas card.  It is fun but also so hard.  There are so many beautiful cards.  One of my favorite places to look is on Shutterfly.  I absolutely love their Christmas cards.  I have ordered from this site in the past and have been very pleased.  They have such a variety of cards to choose from and you can always make yours unique by picking out the number of pictures you want on your card.  I love this because it is a lot easier to get a one good picture of each child than one good picture of the entire family together. I am pretty sure I will be buying a card with enough spots for one picture of each child.  The quality is great and the delivery is always speedy.  Here are a few of my favorites this year.

 With Love Chartreuse Christmas Card

Faith Hope Family Religious Christmas Card

Elegant Cranberry Damask

I am always looking for a deal and if you are too you might be interested in this.  Shutterfly is offering a deal this holiday season.  If you have a blog, Shutterfly is offering bloggers an opportunity to earn 50 free cards just for blogging about their site.  Just go to this link:  http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

Sweet Mess

Gaitley has entered the phase of absolute sweetness.  She is starting to pretend and and make up stories all the time.  Her imagination is running wild and it is so fun to watch.  She loves to play kitchen and baby dolls and get all dressed up in jewelry and make-up.  She is constantly talking to herself or pretending to have a conversation with someone on the phone.  Maybe it is a boy thing, but I don't remember Garrett ever really doing this.  He is just like his daddy and me and we sometimes have a hard time pretending.  We like to stick to the facts.  I am so glad Gaitley is different and has a great imagination.

 

Don't let this post fool you.  She is still my mischievous, middle child.  I found her like this the other night while I was cooking dinner.

Pumpkin Patch and Halloween

We took the kids to a local pumpkin patch to pick out a few pumpkins for Halloween.  Their favorite part was running through the hay maze.  Gracyn is at an awkward stage for pictures so she looks a little uncomfortable in all the ones with the kids.  Garrett had to hold her and she didn't like it too much.

Halloween was also a success.  Garrett is really into guns, knives and swords.  He decided to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pretty much because he got to carry some swords with him.  I thought it was fun because this was one of my favorite shows growing up.  He couldn't believe I knew all the words to the theme song.  Gaitley was a ballerina.  She didn't really care what she was but enjoyed putting on some fancy clothes and getting to wear a little glitter on her cheeks. Gracyn was a little pumpkin and was absolutely perfect while we took the big kids trick-or-treating.  We went to about twenty houses and then headed to our neighbors for a little Halloween party.