Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving two of Jacob's sisters came to visit. It was fun to have Cari and Lisa here to hang out for the long weekend. And on top of that we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house, so there was not much work on my part, which was nice. 

We enjoyed the nice weather all weekend long--it was in the mid-70s which is just about perfect in my opinion. Thanksgiving Day while the turkey finished cooking we played outside on the hammock/swing and the trampoline.

  Then we enjoyed a tasty dinner and stuffed ourselves full. Cari and Lisa joined Rachel at the "kid's table" down at the end. :)

This was the first Thanksgiving with Justin and Marie in 6 years. It was fun having them around. Too bad Todd and Savannah were so stubborn about not coming to join the fun. Apparently they thought having a due date within 3 weeks of Thanksgiving was reason to stick it out at home. Just because they were proven right when Savannah had baby Benjamin 3 days before Thanksgiving doesn't make it okay. ;)

 After we ate we headed down to the park to slide off the calories. Annie, McKenzie and Peyton had to hold hands all the way to the waiting strollers outside. So cute.

 Cari and Lisa joined me for my "Black Friday" shopping adventure at Walmart on Thursday night. I had 3 things on my list, one of which I needed 2 of. We ended up parking in a doctor's office parking lot nearby, walked in to Walmart at 7:50 (the deals started at 8pm), found all 3 items, though the thing I needed 2 of only had one left, so I got it, we were in line at 8:00, and back in our car at 8:05 driving home. Nice and easy.

So on the real Black Friday we were free to go to the zoo.

 (Love this picture of Annie that Jake snapped.)

 We spent most of the rest of the weekend at home decorating for Christmas. (Might as well take advantage of having 2 live-in maids for a few days, since the house is generally messy, and the days that we get out the Christmas decorations any hope of a clean house usually gets pushed far away. But with them there our house stayed nice and (relatively) clean, even with all the extra boxes of Christmas junk.)

Then Rachel got the camera to document the fun:

The girls were happy to have an on-call book-reader any time.

And a tomato picker.

Lisa sequestered herself in the relative quiet of our bedroom to get some of her impending homework done over the weekend, but emerged to play and have some sanity breaks. Shaun the Sheep always restores sanity after too much homework. :) Or too much playing in the case of the girls:

Both Cari and Lisa spent a decent amount of time outside absorbing the sun's rays to stock up before they headed back to the bleak, cold winter of Rexburg.

Lisa had to go back Sunday to make it in time for her classes on Monday, but Cari got to stay a couple more days until Tuesday. She helped the kids make a huge pile of pillows and blankets to jump on. The girls had a blast.

And Ryan thought it was the coolest thing ever, too.

Today Annie saw some of the blankets that they had used in that pile and wanted to make another pillow pile. Looks like the fun sunk in.

It was great fun having the aunts come visit. Cari taught Annie to say Boo-yah! which is probably the cutest thing to come out of Thanksgiving weekend. It makes me laugh every time. I decided I definitely could stand having a live-in nanny and live-in maid. But I'd probably need a slightly bigger house so they could have somewhere besides the couch to sleep... We'll work on that.

Thanks Lisa and Cari for coming down! It was tons of fun. Extra time with family makes holidays all that much better!

Photo shoot

We had a photoshoot at home after we got home from Rachel's birthday party at Grandma and Grandpa Knight's house.

Love the drool.

And some tunnel fun:

Ryan LOVES the tunnel. He gets so excited he's panting as he crawls through the tunnel at top speed.

Rachel's 5th Birthday

Rachel's birthday was this week. We decided to have friend birthday parties on the even years and family ones the odd years. Since Rachel turned 5 this year we had a family birthday. We had planned on going down to the Children's Museum, but on our way to drop off Ryan at my parents' house we had an almost hour delay and detour because of El Tour de Tucson, and we realized that the children's race started by the Children's Museum and it would be impossible to find parking or even drive down there, so we gave up on that idea.

We played for a while on the trampoline in Grandma and Grandpa's back yard.

We visited the park.

Then we went to Bookman's and Rachel got to use the $10 birthday card she got from them, and a $10 gift certificate from Marie and Justin. She was excited to pick out her own books, and even get a DVD.

After Bookman's we headed back to have presents and cake. Rachel was very excited to open her presents. She got some movies, dresses, jewelry, skates, and maybe a few more exciting things.

 

She requested a pony cake.

Showing off the new skating gear:

Since we did most of the celebrating on Saturday all that was left on her actual birthday was to pick her favorite meals. I made her pancakes for breakfast (that's a puppy and a 5 if you can't tell), and spaghetti for dinner.

 She had her preschool Thanksgiving feast that day, too, so she wore her turkey hat to school for it. She is getting more into fashion and chooses her clothes deliberately every day to match and look "good" together.

Rachel is a blessing in our family. She is a really helpful big sister and knows how to make Annie laugh when she's sad, and how to get Ryan to calm down when he's upset. She has a good sense of humor and likes to make people laugh and is working on her joke-telling skills. She is a fabulous reader. Every night at scripture reading she most often read her whole verse all by herself with little or no help. She can read pretty much any kids' book we own on her own and spends a good bit of time laying on her bed reading. Sometimes she'll even read to Annie. She likes to color and draw and occasionally will illustrate a whole book with a story she's made up herself. Rachel likes to do service, especially as a surprise. She will clean her room or the whole living room all by herself, or at her dad's suggestion all as a surprise for me. But when it's not going to be a surprise or when I ask her to help clean up or help with something else she is not always so eager. :) Rachel likes to be a good example and choose the right (though sometimes she gets jealous and wishes she were younger so she could get potty training treats, or have shorter time-outs). She is a good oldest child and mommy's helper and a great big sister. We're blessed to have her in our family.