William's birthday

William turned four on November 28th, and since Tom was going to be out of town for William's birthday party at the end of the week, we had a little family party before he left

We let him decorate his own little cake again this year. He loves being able to do that without worrying about making a mess.

During the day, I took William to the store and let him pick out a little birthday present for himself. He picked out a little cape and mask set, which he loves!! He also got a new bike so that he could go riding with our family on bike rides on Saturday. Kaitlyn also used her money to buy him a light saber. It was her left over birthday money, and she wanted to use it for him.

The next post will be about his party...

Thanksgiving!!

Here's some pics of a few things we did on Thanksgiving. We had our good friends the Ence's over, and the Missionaries.

William loves to help me cook. Here he is helping to make the Cranberry Whipped Cream Salad:

A fun activity I had the kids do when they were bored waiting for our friends to arrive, was to make napkin rings for everyone. We took a used plastic wrap tube (because those are stiffer than tp tubes), and we cut it into rings. Then I got out all of our craft things and just let them decorate them any way they wanted. They turned out really nice.

Here's the Turkey that I roasted in the Roaster Oven. Here's the cupcake Teepees we intended to make on Thanksgiving, but didn't get made until a few days later for Family Home Evening. You bake cake in the sugar cones, and then decorate them to look like teepees. Here's some of the fun our kids had with the Missionaries, Elder George in the background, and Elder Steenick playing on the piano wearing the pink hat.

Roasting marshmallows in the kitchen!

Not cold enough to have a fire? Roast giant marshmallows over the stove!!

Dad went hunting

Ok, this post is not for Aunt Spring, .... :) but we're excited that Tom was able to go hunting for the first time this season. We even bought a freezer to keep it in. We're able to save alot of money on meat that way. We don't eat a ton of meat, but what we do use ground beef in a few dinners, and we like to have roasts on Sunday.

I told Tom that if he does hunt, I don't want to be able to tell it was once a deer. He has to bring it home looking like it came from the store... I know, I know.. remember I'm a city girl, and I have to take small steps.... :) I will not be posting a picture of the deer he got. I could barely look at the picture he took of it on his cell phone...

Anyway...so, he brought home the meat in a big cooler, and we just packaged it. We have a meat grinder attachment to our Kitchen Aid, and we made some ground venison with it. William particularly loved doing that part.

We have enjoyed quite a few dinners from our venison, including meatloaf. We could barely tell the difference between it and groundbeef. There's much less fat, and so it's much healthier.

Happy Halloween!

Ready for Trick or Treating!

Alan's helmet was a real helmet Tom got from Australia. It had holes in it. We're thinking it was used for target practice?

Kaitlyn was a pink bat girl!

Turning Sarah into a red m&m

Bending over was a little tough as an m&m

And.... spiderman!!

...Or is it William?

Carving pumpkins is always a fun tradition for our family on Halloween. I've been so busy that we didn't go and buy pumpkins until Halloween. It was nearly impossible to find any pumpkins. We usually get a pumpkin for everyone, but the only pumpkins that were left were $30 pumpkins at a shop outside of town, and those pumpkins were painted. So, we just bought one, scrubbed off the paint as best we could, then each of the kids carved a face on a side of it. I carved the faces for William and Kaitlyn, and Alan and Sarah got to carve their own. It was Sarah's first time carving a pumpkin. She loved it.

The other pumkin is one we carved at the Stake Fall Festival a few weeks ago.

And Tom was Superman... And I was Red Riding Hood...

The Stake Fall Festival

Two weeks ago was the Stake Fall Festival. In years past, instead of a Fall Festival they had a ball. This was much more family friendly. Each ward was assigned to do a few games, and every family was asked to bring chilli. There was a lot of chilli. The kids had fun carving pumpkins, "bobbing" for donuts, playing tug of war, getting face paint, making sand art, and many other things. It was a nice activity. We only got a few pics. William was with me all the time, so the pictures I have are of him.

For face paint William wanted a "W" on one side and an "X" on the other. Here he is very focused as he gets it done:

Fun at Ft. Benning

We recently went to the Ft. Benning celebration they had for all the new soldiers and their families that have moved to Ft. Benning. There were many many bounce houses and other activities. Here are a few of the highlights:

William and Sarah waited in the sun for nearly an hour in line for this "ride". They both loved it.

The velcro wall was so fun.

This is Kaitlyn and Alan "fighting". Kaitlyn needed help holding up her "weapon" (what are those things called anyway?) because it was so heavy.

At the end of the night we watched an awesome display of fireworks, and waited to see if we won a car in a drawing. We didn't. Oh well, it was a fun day anyway.

Our trip to the Fair

It was a rainy dark day, but the only day we had to go to the fair, and so we decided to make the trip to Perry Georgia and see what was there. Tom and Kaitlyn and Sarah went on the Mad Mouse roller coaster. Alan is not much of a roller coaster kid and William was too small, so we waited while the others went.

I remember going to the fair when I was younger, but what I don't remember is all the paintings of immodestly dressed women all over the rides and games in the carnival area. Yuck. It was disgusting. Alan did not want to be there. We only went on a few rides, then we went to try and find some other things to look at away from the rides. We decided that we didn't really want to go again.
We did go the petting zoo, and that was pretty fun. We also went to see a small circus while there.

But actually, the best fun of the night was going to Applebees after we left the fair. It just so happened that the night we went Applebees had a "kids eat free" night. We didn't know it. They also had a craft table where the kids got to decorate and keep their own mini pumpkin and decorate a little pumpkin mask.
No more Georgia National Fair for us. But maybe Applebees again.... :)

M&M math

Math is always more fun with m&m's.

Happy Autumn!

Here's just a little post about the fun stuff we like to do to decorate for Autumn. We just love this time of year.

One of our favorite things to do is to get out the mason jars we painted to look like pumpkins and put them in our fireplace with lights in them. Now it looks like there's a fire in the fireplace. You can see them in the fireplace behind Kaitlyn.

Here's a new one we did this year that I thought was cute. Kaitlyn is holding the balloon pumpkin we made. We just attached an orange balloon to a little dowel with floral tape and then drew a face on it. Here's a very bad pic of one of our living room windows with shiny leaves draped over the window treatments....