Thanksgiving Week

We had a fun Thanksgiving Week. Starting with the Sunday before Thanksgiving we made the Draper raviolis. We make these ravs every Thanksgiving and Christmas. They are a lot of work but so good and worth it.


Jenney and Stephen helping make the ravs


Beck and Kylan loved helping roll out the dough


Hunter also wanted a turn. I think that this is the kid's favorite part. All of the kids usually take turns rolling out the dough. I think that they love getting so messy with the flour also.


Here are the ravs ready to freeze and wait until Thursday to cook and eat. Usually we make the ravs Thanksgiving morning. The last couple of years we have made them the Sunday before Thanksgiving to help with the stress on Thanksgiving. It has worked out really well this way but it is hard to make the ravs and then wait to eat them. We don't get the immediate gratification.


Wednesday we made some cute desserts to share with everyone. The kids had fun making these with me. The first one we made were pilgrim hats.


Hunter and Beck got the cookies ready.


Then we melted chocolate and covered marshmallows in the chocolate and placed them on the cookies


Then after it all set up we put the yellow squares on them to make it look like a pilgrim hat.

The next one we made was some cute turkeys.


We were suppose to use Nutter Butter cookies (at least in the one's that I had seen that is what they had used) We couldn't find any in two different stores (kind of a weird thing to run out of, don't you think?) Anyway, Kylan found these crackers that we thought would work.


Then we put mini m&ms on them for eyes.


And then placed them on the striped cookies and put legs and beaks on them. They turned out pretty cute.

Finally Thursday came and we were so excited for Thanksgiving and all of the good food and family time. We got up early Thursday morning and made the rolls for dinner.


Don't these look so good? I miss my grandma's homemade rolls. I need to figure out how to make them one of these years. These were good but not like homemade from scratch rolls. I just used Rhodes rolls.


Can you tell what these are that we made out of the rolls for the kids? I was talking to Stephen trying to figure out what kind of rolls to make for Thanksgiving and he said that it would be cool to figure out how to make them look like turkeys. I was trying to figure out how to do it when just like 10 minutes later I watched one of the craft type shows that I like to watch once in a while and they had how to make turkey rolls out of Rhodes rolls. Crazy, huh? So that is what we did. I think that they turned out cute and the kids liked them also.


Here is some of the food for our Thanksgiving feast.


Here is cute Gavin in his own chair by the adults waiting for his food.



And here are the rest of the kids. They were all so happy to be together and at their own table.

We hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We love you all.

Stephen surprised me!

So, Stephen saw Twilight on Monday night. After I had seen the movie I thought that Stephen wouldn't like it. But he surprised me when he came home and told me that he liked the movie. Of course there were scenes that both of us thought could have been better but overall he liked it. If any of you know Stephen, this is a huge compliment for the movie because there are not many movies that Stephen likes.

Twilight

I went to the Twilight movie last night with a couple of friends and a couple of family(which could be included with friends also). I bought tickets a couple of weeks ago. We got there and had to stand in line outside for a while and then were let inside the theater and sat there for a while also but it was so worth it. We all loved the movie. I don't want to give anything away for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Later we will have to talk about what we liked or didn't like about it. There are some really great scenes. I think that they did a great job of staying with the story that we all love so much. Stephen is going to go see it on Monday with work friends, I think. We will have to see how he likes it. He is a pretty hard critic of movies. I think that he will like it but not to the extent that I do. Anyway, enough rambling on, just go see it.

Family pictures dilemma

A couple of people have had stories of their troubles of trying to get a good family picture. I posted a few pictures from us trying to get a cute family picture. I think that they turned out ok but not great. But we went through a lot to get these pictures. Here is our story of trying to get our pictures this year.
First, a couple of years ago I found a place on USU campus that we could stand and have the temple in the background and thought that it would be a good place for a picture. It was in the Fall that I saw this place. Well last spring I went to try and get a picture and we found that you couldn't see the temple from that spot when the leaves were on the trees. So we decided to wait until fall to try and get the picture. I wanted us to be in Sunday dress and Stephen didn't want to be on USU campus in his church clothes trying to take a picture with a tripod. So I suggested just going to the temple grounds and taking a picture. He didn't like that idea either. So we looked around a little bit and found a couple of other places but for one reason or another we didn't get pictures taken in those places either. Then, Stephen suggested that we just wear white t-shirts and jeans and try the picture on campus. The kids didn't cooperate that day so we didn't get pictures that day. Then Stephen suggested that we try and just get a good picture out by his parent's house using someone's farm. I have always liked cute "farm" pictures so I agreed knowing that we would eventually get the picture with the temple in the background. I also liked the idea of asking someone to take the picture and try and get our kids to look at the camera. So we headed out to his parent's house looking for a good spot. We get to his parent's house and got dressed and by the time it was time to go we only had a few minutes of light as the sun was starting to go down. So we ended up taking the picture in his parent's backyard. Like I said they turned out ok but when you imagine in your head a picture of your family in their Sunday best with the temple in the background and you get your family in white t-shirts and jeans in your in-laws backyard, it is hard to be content. The pictures will do for now and who knows maybe next year my kids will be older and better and it will be a better time to get the kind of picture that I wanted. We will have to see.
So all of you that have a hard time getting a family picture, know that you are not alone. I think that we all struggle with this to some level. If it isn't family cooperating, money or time it is something else. But I will keep trying because I love to look back at all of our pictures and see how fast my kids are growing.

Family pictures

I wanted to try and do family pictures on our own this year. It is really hard to get a good family picture with a 3 year old and a 1 year old. By the time that we got one to look and smile the other one was goofing off. I think that we did ok but I have a lot of ideas for next time. It has gotten cold and ugly now so we might have to wait until spring.

We didn't plan pictures this time. We were on a hike looking at fall leaves and really liked this waterfall. Next spring or fall we are planning on returning and trying to take a real picture with our tripod. I took this one just trying to hold still. You can tell it is a little blurry. The waterfall is an awesome background.

Hunter is 6! (Nov 13th)

Hunter has been very excited to turn 6. A lot of his class are 6 he says and his cousin Austin is 6 so he couldn't wait to be 6. We don't have much planned for today but we will take treats (donuts) to school for his class and then let him pick what to eat for dinner tonight.(I am still waiting to hear what he has decided) We did his birthday this last weekend. He had a hard time picking what theme he wanted. I think that he finally decided the day before. I think that we did a pretty good job with the little bit of time to plan. I thought of all sorts of fun things to do if we had more time and of course money. He finally picked to have a army soldiers birthday. He loves to play with his army soldiers.

Can you see the excitement on his face?


First we played a couple of games. This one was matching with army soldiers under the Easter eggs. The kids had a lot of fun but had a hard time waiting their turns.




All the kids had fun playing, even the only girl cousin Kandie.



Then we opened presents, which was Hunter's favorite part, of course.




This was his army solider cake

Here is one side of the cake.

It was a really good cake.

Then the kids had fun with their prize bags. One of the items were these funny teeth. Here is Beck trying to keep his teeth in his mouth.

Here are the boys with the teeth. It was pretty funny.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HUNTER!!

Thanksgiving cuteness and funny

I love babies. Isn't this one so cute?

I like Twilight but I am not this obsessed.


Now here are some funny turkey things.

After posting this I figured out you can't read this or really even see what is going on. It says " I meant pass me the stuffing from the turkey!" The "stuffing" from the scarecrow is in front of Dorothy. I guess it isn't really funny when you have to explain it. =)

A little late but still Fun

With all of the activities that we had planned for Halloween we didn't get a chance to carve pumpkins. I thought that this was ok but my kids did not. So we finally carved our pumpkins last night.

First I had to cut the pumpkins open


Then the kids liked getting their hands in and getting the seeds out. The scraping tools that we have help so much.




Then we started carving. Everyone did a great job.


Here is Hunter's that he cut all by himself


Here is Beck's that Kylan helped him cut. Beck wanted a vampire.


Here are Kylan's. His are Webkinz themed.


I decided that since we were getting ready for Thanksgiving that I would have a turkey pumpkin.

We have this play set in our front yard that we are not very fond of. It is just the metal part. The slide is gone and the swings are not there either. This is how it was when we moved in. To me it is just a big beehive. We spray it for bees but they keep coming back. Anyway, the kids love to play on it. Beck isn't big enough to play on it but he wants to do everything the big boys do. Last week when we were outside playing Beck got upset when I told him that I didn't want them playing on the play set. Of course none of them listened and this is what I saw when I yelled at Beck to get off of the play set.



A little bit closer view



A little closer look. Whenever Beck is sad this is the face that he has. I think that it is so cute and makes me smile. Doesn't he look so sad?

We had a lot of fun on Halloween. It is so much fun to watch the kids have fun. First the kids helped me make some treats for the cousins that came "trick or treating" to our house. We got the idea from a Halloween magazine that we had.


Here is the idea in the mag.




Here is what ours looked like




Then we went to the Trunk or Treat. Here is the group getting ready for it to start.






This year Gavin was old enough to trick or treat and not just sit in the stroller. He loved that he got to walk around and get the candy himself. Here is Beck and Gavin picking which candy they want.




All of the kids had so much fun this year partly because it was warm enough and light enough that they weren't all bundled up in their winter coats and freezing. I vote that the time changes after Halloween every year.


At the trunk or treat Gavin loved getting his own candy and he was pretty good at putting it into his pumpkin basket but he had a hard time leaving it there. I thought that this picture was cute. It captured Beck and his cute smile but also Gavin and his struggle to leave the candy where it was.





Then we went back to grandma and grandpa Draper's house to have a Halloween party. We started with making some scary dinner. Here is a picture of Stephen, mine and Beck's spider pizza.(We got the idea out of another magazine)




After dinner was had our traditional pinata. This year it was a bee.
Gavin loved to just punch the pinata. He didn't want to use the stick.



All of the kids loved the pinata.


Beck and Kandie are such cute cousins. They play together so well and love each other so much. While we were hitting the pinata Kandie came and stood next to Beck and they ended up holding hands. Aren't they so cute?

After the pinata, we went inside and played a few other games. One of them was a treasure hunt. The treasure was in this goop. The kids had to stick their hand in it to find some money. Some of the kids liked putting their hand in it, some didn't.

I hope that everyone had a fun Halloween!