Thanksgiving

 We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year. Mom, Dad, Ben and Kelsey, and Mallory and Owen came over around 10:30 and we spent the day together. (Kim and Thane spent this year with Thane's family.) 

We spent the day playing ping pong, table football, watching some football and of course eating. Everyone contributed to our meal and it was delicious. Sous-vided turkey, bourbon-orange sweet potatoes, green olive sourdough bread, roasted veggies, stove top stuffing, and a fresh salad completed the meal. Nobody went hungry...and we topped it off with pumpkin pie, apple crisp, and tiramisu! 

Kids Table

Grandpa won the tournament!

Building Annaliese's new lego set

Table football. Haleigh won. 

After everyone left,  I was going through some of Annaliese's papers that she brought home from school. I came across this one and thought it was so great. Family is fantastic and it was so wonderful to spend the day together. 

Birthday Sleepover

 Annaliese turns 10 on Thanksgiving!! She has been looking forward to her birthday for a very long time and has been eagerly anticipating her birthday party. She requested a sleepover with the three girls from her class at school and a girl from our neighborhood. Since not everyone was going to be in town for Thanksgiving break, we opted to do her party last night. The girls have been so excited and her entire class knew about the party! 

They all came over right after school and immediately started playing...hide-and-seek, Skip-Bo, Sorry, Legos, and making friendship bracelets. Annaliese asked for steak and baked potatoes for dinner and a soccer ball cake for dessert. They've been learning songs from The Sound of Music at school so watching the movie was also on the agenda for the night! We moved the glass table out of the living room and they all lined up their sleeping bags and slept on the floor (including Haleigh and Lydia.) I think they fell asleep around 11:00pm and everyone was up and playing tag by 7:00am!

Haleigh and Mikayla

Ella, Savannah, and Lydia

It was so fun to see all the girls together, laughing and playing. Annaliese had a fantastic time!

Ella, Savannah, Annaliese, Mikayla, Esme and Lydia

Catching up on the past few months

 October and into November have been rather interesting. Lydia's preschool class spent the last week of October and the first week of November home on a modified quarantine/possible classroom COVID exposure break, I switched jobs and started working in a clinic, parent/teacher conferences happened which meant 3 1/2 days off school, and then we had ridiculous amounts of rain in a short period which led to the Nooksack river flooding and a few more days off school. 

All of that meant we have had lots of time to play games, hang out with cousins, and adjust to inconsistent schedules. 

Watching Moana at Grandma and Grandpa's

Exploring a nearby park/creek

Lydia loves playing Rummikub!

Haleigh has recently started to really enjoy reading!

Haleigh and Mallory were invited to a birthday party for one of their classmates. I haven't met many of the people in her class and since parents were invited also, I went along. Most of the girls in her class were there; it was really nice to meet them and their parents and have time to chat...in person! There was a bounce house, costumes, pumpkin decorating, a candy hunt, lots of food!

Gathering candy

Decorating pumpkins

We also fit in time one afternoon to carve pumpkins. By the time Halloween came around they had rotted and were already thrown away, but they were fun while they were around!

Lydia lost her first tooth! (11/30/21)

by Annaliese

Also by Annaliese

Cousins!

Halloween

 For the first time that I can remember, the girls were really excited about Halloween and there was lots of talk about costumes and activities! After lots of discussion and a few trips to the store, we figured it out. We ended up with a witch, a penguin, and Josefina (one of the American Girls.) 

Our festivities started right after church with a pinata.There aren't very many kids at our church, but our children's leader has such a heart for our kids and is always doing fun things like this for them!

After church, we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then headed over to Kelsey's house. Her neighbor, Maria loves to decorate and have parties, so the two of them teamed up and set up some activities for the kiddos. The sun came out and it was a pretty great afternoon!

Mallory (a cheetah) decorating a pumpkin.

Haleigh tossing ping pong balls into buckets to win more candy!

Annaliese (Josefina) with her delicious caramel apple!

We left Kelsey's house in time to get home and finish getting dinner ready (chicken pot pie soup was cooking in the crockpot!) and headed over to Kim's house. We had a simple dinner (Soup and pigs-in-a-blanket!) before heading out to do some trick-or-treating in their neighborhood. 

A teenager. Josephine. A witch. A beyblade pro/fanatic. A penguin.

We had a perfect night to walk around; the kids got A LOT of candy and we were able to take a look at the stars and a few planets while we were out!

Assessing the candy!!

Halloween is such an odd day, but it was fun to spend the day doing so many different activities. And now we have more candy than we know what to do with!!

(Just for reference, here is the picture that Annaliese was using as we put together her costume. I'd say we did a pretty good job!)