Thanksgiving

We had such a fun Thanksgiving this year.  Dad was able to get the whole weekend off of work so we headed to Rexburg to spend the holiday with Grandpa and Grandma Southwick and Great Grandma Ward. We got there in the morning on Thanksgiving Day.  There were several of us coming this year.  There was our family, Dave and his family, Becky and her family, and Bill and her family.  All together there were 25 of us.  We got to meet Dave's new wife April.  She is great and we love her in our family. So nice to see Dave so happy!  Grandpa transformed his garage into a great eating area.  He had a cool heater that kept us toasty warm even though it was freezing outside.  He set up tables and it worked great for eating, visiting, playing lots of games and looking at black Friday adds!  The cousins had a great time hanging out together.  We stayed down the road at a hotel for the two nights we were there.  We had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.  Dave brought his home grown 30 lb turkey and we had a total of 10 pies!!  It was awesome.  

 Grandpa organized a little project so that he could get some much needed help on his little farm.  He had the kids cutting and stacking wood.  They also got to help with the goats and chickens.  It's always an adventure when you go to Grandpa's house.  We tried goat milk and goat milk cheese.  Our pies and mashed potatoes were even made with goat milk!

Family Pictures 2012

Family Pictures done for one more year!!  Yahoo!  There is a story to our pictures this year.  We could not figure out a time to get pictures taken with Kylee at school and Chris' crazy work schedule.  After looking at every option we concluded that they would have to be taken while we were in Rexburg for Thanksgiving!  We were staying in a hotel so Chris and I got up early the morning after Thanksgiving and went to scout out a place to take them.  We found this cool fence off the side of the freeway by a Boy Scout Camp.  And we found the cute little bench up at the Gardens on the BYU Idaho Campus.  We returned to the hotel to get everyone ready.  Luckily we had 2 bathrooms for all that girl hair!  It took us several hours to take the pictures and it was FREEZING cold.  Of course it was...we were in Rexburg!  We were pretty happy with the end results though.  Not bad for taking your own pictures!  

Happy Dad!!

See the BIG smile of this Dad's face??  He is lacing up those size 15 snow boots to go outside and fire up his brand new SNOW BLOWER!!  Yep, Chris finally got his dream come true after many many years of wishing.  I have never seen a man so happy to wake up to a snow filled driveway.  It used to bring moans and groans, but not anymore.  Bring on the snow.  He is happy to play with his new toy!!

Halloween

Only 2 "Trick or Treaters" left in this house!!  Only Quincy and Brinley went trick or treating this year...well kind of!  The Mecham girls came to go with them.  Brinley is with her favorite friend Kate and Quincy is with Kira...Kate's older sister.  They headed out and covered the whole neighborhood.  Kade was in a stupor as to what he should do this year.  Too old to just dress up and go, but not quite ready to give it up all together.  Luckily for him, the girls took him up on his offer to "take" them around.  As he had hoped by doing this...he ended up with a huge bag of candy.  As you can see, Quincy and Brinley both decided to be "babies" this year.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Carving Pumpkins

On a Tuesday night when Dad was home we carved pumpkins.  Hurray that Dad was home to help!  Kylee was in St. George at school but the rest of the kids had a great time.  Grateful my older kids still like to do fun things!!  They are all getting old enough that they each did most of it on their own.

Brinley's 1st Grade Halloween Program

Brinley got to dress up for her Halloween Program.  She of course wanted to be a Princess...Cinderella!  Her program was really cute.  She did a great job singing and doing all of the hand actions.  Much improved from last year when she refused to participate in any of the actions.  We loved it when they sang some songs in Chinese.  That was really cool.  It is amazing how quickly they are learning.

 This was pretty funny...Brinley had told Chris NOT to try to take a picture of her as she was walking off the stage.  Of course that just encouraged him more.  This is her trying to hide behind her friend, then hide behind her hands, and then finally just growling at him in disgust.  What would our kids do without a big tease for a father???