Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I went to the school to take part in the girls' Thanksgiving celebrations. Ellie's class had a Thanksgiving feast while wearing the traditional grocery sack vest and Indian headband. The 2nd grade had a "pow-wow" all morning and did all sorts of Indian crafts. We even brought home some of the crafts from the pow-wow so that Rachel and Eliza could do them at home. They each made an Indian head dress and a papoose and were busy for a solid hour after lunch (yay!). We are all looking forward to a few days off to relax and eat turkey!

Busy weekend

So we had a very full weekend and I kept thinking I would get some cute pictures, but it just didn't happen. On Friday we went to movie night at the kids' school and watched Kung Fu Panda. It was fun although we missed the beginning and we were all a little lost until about three quarters of the way through the movie. (I think it helped a little when I actually explained to the girls what Kung Fu is.) Saturday we went to the matinee of Peter Pan at the high school . It was really quite good and the girls' liked seeing how they made them fly. My cousin Jeremy played Captain Hook and did a great job as always. I was hoping that I get a cute picture of him with the girls to post, but we never actually even got to talk to Jeremy--he must just think he's too good for us;) We spent the evening at my parents house so that Ben could watch the BYU/U game which turned out to be a rather disappointing game. And today we hosted our very first (early) Thanksgiving dinner with Ben's family. I was up by 6:00 this morning getting myself ready for church so that we could bathe the kids, feed them breakfast, make rolls, put the turkey in the roaster, put the ham in the oven and get all the girls' hair done so that I could get to choir practice by 10:30. And I actually made it! Whew! It was all worth it though because it was so nice to have Ben's family over and dinner was delicious thanks to everyone's help. So that was our very busy weekend and it's time to start another week. I keep thinking I'm going to have some free time to read or sleep in or something, but maybe that's going to have to wait until after the holidays. Oh well.

Mom's back!

I won't lie. Last week was a little rough. Ellie was sick with a cold and an ear infection for most of the week and seeing as she's already the queen of mood swings this was not good news. By the end of the week I was ready to have a major meltdown and was starting to believe that I really was "the meanest mom ever". Consequently, it was so refreshing to have a little break this past weekend as I traveled to St. George with my parents for Mic and Libby's sealing. I am so happy for them and so grateful to have a wonderful husband who watched the kids all weekend so that I could be there (including taking four kids to Stake Conference yesterday all by his lonesome--yes, you should be impressed!) I love you Ben!

So I started out this week spiritually, emotionally and physically rejuvinated and ready to be a mom again. I have been waiting to make these cute little turkey cupcakes all year ever since my friend Holly gave me the idea last Thanksgiving. So the kids and I had fun decorating them for FHE tonight and we ended up with so many that we had to take them around to some of the neighbors (who knew that one cake mix makes like 80 mini cupcakes?).

Brigham snitching candy corn---this kid's into everything!

Here are my cute little turkeys with the finish product.

Happy Veteran's Day!

Today Emma was supposed to dress in red, white and blue for a special Veteran's Day assembly at school. After they had both gotten dressed, Eliza insisted on changing her pink shirt to a red one so that she could match her sister. So here are the twiners all ready to go to school this morning in their red,white and blue!

My Little Helper

This morning, Rachel really wanted to "help" me do some housework. Those of you who are reading this are probably thinking "judging from the posts on Mistie's blog, her life must be really mundane". Well, you would be right. We don't get out much. That's why I'm taking pictures of us doing housework.

Here's Rachel helping me fold laundry. My girls are actually pretty good at folding laundry, but today she thought it would be fun to try on other family members' clothing after which she folded exactly two shirts.
Here's Rachel trying to vacuum up her little brother. It looks like Brigham is running away from the vacuum, but he actually thought this was quite funny--he saw mommy sitting on the floor and was crawling over to sit on my lap.

Oh and don't you love her bed head? She cut her bangs months ago and she still has a short section of hair right in front that was sticking straight up. She has the greatest hair in the morning.

Making play dough

I had planned on taking my kids to Grandma's while I went to vote since Ben was working all day as a pollster. I heard it wasn't too busy though, so I hauled all four kids to the voting booth with me and we went to spend the evening at Grandma and Grandpa's house afterward. The girls had been dying to make play dough and my mother, being the wonderful grandmother that she is, happily obliged. We made the kind with Kool-Aid in it---it gives it a nice bright color and smells yummy!
Here are some of their creations:





Even Brig had fun squishing little balls of play dough in his hands.

My 1st non-Halloween Post!

Today Brigham discovered how to climb up into the sink while I was getting myself ready for the day. He thought it was a fun game to climb up there over and over again so that mommy could lift him out again and put him back down on the floor. I was dying for an excuse to post something on my brand new blog so I decided to take a cute picture of him in the sink. And Ben will be so impressed that I did it all by myself! Isn't blogging fun?