Our first Thanksgiving at our house!

I'm going to count this as our Frolicky Friday, since this post is about our entire day. :)

We had our very first Thanksgiving at our own house this year, the day after Thanksgiving. We started off cooking and cleaning, of course!

Jayla helped with the pumpkin pie filling. Jonathan had already helped make the crusts.

Jacob made the "Peach Stuff" all by himself!

Jonathan made the cranberry fruit salad. Yummy!

My mom was feeding Jack a little early. Little guys just can't wait for all of it to be ready! I thought this picture Jonathan took was funny. Maybe it's the angle or their expressions?

We only have a small table at the moment and no chairs! We have freecycled so many things lately, so we're sort of in-between table & chairs right now. So, the kids ate on a sheet on the floor. They thought it was fun to have an indoor picnic!

Jack has an, um, interesting look on his face!



Grandma brought us a hot air popcorn popper. The kids loved watching it! We weren't sure what happened to the lid, so we improvised. :)


At the same time, Grandma was having Jayla "help" with the peanut brittle.

There was too much going on, I guess. Grandma has made this probably a thousand times, but.....

something went wrong. She was completely dumbfounded! What could it possibly be? Hmmm.......

Corn syrup! She forgot to add it in! But here is proof that it was sitting right there on the counter! You can even see it in the picture above! It's alright, Mom. It still tastes good! LOL!
Seriously though, she makes the most amazing peanut brittle every year. I requested that she make this because it is SO GOOD! I've never seen this happen before! LOL! At least the holiday season is just beginning so there is plenty of time to make up for it. :) :) :)

Jacob helped serve the pie. Jonathan and Jayla wanted her to try both of their pumpkin pies, so she got a small sliver of each. Jacob couldn't wait for his, so he just drug his finger through for a sampling.

I have come to realize that dirty faces to little boys is an art! They are very proud, especially this one.

The rest of the day was just relaxing and playing. We were going to go watch a river parade, but since Jack was sick, we thought it best not to get him out in the cool air.

I like this picture of Jacob and Daddy looking at a magazine together. Right after I took this, Myles flipped him over his shoulder and they started tickling and giggling. There is so much of that around here!

This is the boys' room. It works best like this for now (we only have 2 bedrooms), but their "bedroom" is in the middle of the house, so we have to step over toys all the time. At least it helps to keep it clean (out of necessity). In this case though, we had to weave through the yarn "laser beams" as the kids were playing spy games.

Myles really got into spying with them. He even insisted on changing his code name when I overheard his first one. They were all running around the house, using code names, coming up with secret spy plans. They were even using our cell phones for communicating!

Next we started making popcorn strings to hang on the tree. We still have not finished these (as of Monday), but we will get them added to the tree this week.

We had also discussed the persectued Chritians in other countries, specifically India, and about how thankful we are to have the freedom in this country to worship God anytime we want. (See previous post for details.) Finally by midnight everyone was asleep. Jayla had said she had the best Thanksgiving ever. :) She wanted to sleep on the couch, so she brought what appeared to be her entire room in with her!


They're always so cute when they're asleep!


Oh, look who is still awake! This little guy has his hours backwards. At least he is feeling better. :) I think he went to sleep just a few minutes after I snapped this picture.

It was a great day of food, family and fun, with new and old traditions. What more can you ask for? We had a great day!

Frolicky Friday

So it is a well-known fact that every girl *needs* a little Well, tonight Jayla and I had another Girls Only night. We ate at our favorite deli. Oh, it was ever so good! YUM! I get the same thing nearly every time, and it just seems to keep getting better! Then we went to a nearby store and went SHOPPING!

We looked at hair accessories. I let her pick out a few. (She is doing very good about keeping them all together now that she has her own room and a vanity to keep everything!) Then there were purses, belts, jewelry.....all the necessary fashion accessories. Next we looked at clothes. Then we went to a different area and looked at more hair accessories. I meant to go look at makeup and nail polish, but I guess it slipped my mind while we were caught up with all the other bling around us! We ended our shopping trip in the toy section after choosing two games and a pirate dress-up set for Jacob for his upcoming birthday.

I spent way too much money, but we had a great time together this evening. :) She was needing some alone time with me. She gets pouty every so often, mostly when she gets way behind on sleep, and it helps pull her out of her bad mood. LOL! She was especially excited to get Jacob some gifts, and she genuinely tried to choose something that he would like! She is the one who chose the pirate set! (She is going to be a great wife someday.....she sure knows boys! LOL!)

I wanted to say too that I didn't blog about Frolicky Friday last week. I can't remember the specifics now, but I know it was a busy day. I don't think we were able to play much that day. :(

And as far as *today* with the boys, well, I did play with the younger two a little, but we got up early and took Jonathan and my mom to the train station (to visit my little brother and his family for the weekend), so we got up very early (for us) and then took naps later! By the time I was fully awake, Myles was home from work. All we had done by then was cleaned out the van, and then Jayla and I went out. I'm about to post some pictures though of some other "frolicky" days we've had recently, so watch for them soon! :)

Frolicky Friday

Woah, am I sure late in posting about last Friday's fun! We went to a church function that was a huge outreach event. The kids had a BLAST! Well, I guess Myles and I did too. :) I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. A lot of what we did was not photographed though because we were having so much fun we couldn't get any pictures!!!

A lovely picture of "Aunt Sara". Myles' brother is the Children's pastor, so she gets to do all kinds of things. She's a lot of fun!

The event was filled with CANDY, over 15 inflatables, almost 10 rides, CANDY, food, drinks, CANDY, entertainment, giveaways, CANDY and lots of old friends. :)

Oh, and we met another Jayla! We were getting off the huge strawberry ride when another mom said, "Jayla, come here!" to get some candy (there was a TON of it, and we definitely got our fair share!) After realizing she wasn't talking to MY Jayla, I went up to her and asked "What is her name????" She said Jayla and I excitedly said, "That's MY daughter's name too!!!" She asked me if it was spelled the same, J-A-Y-L-A ? I said yes and then she said, "I thought I made it up!" I quickly replied, "I DID TOO!!!" LOL! The girls were about the same height, but the other Jayla was 4 years old. She was tall! So if anyone made it up, my Jayla was first! LOL! Actually, I did think I had made it up at the time, but shortly after she was born I googled her name and there are quite a few of them, actually! It's a really great name! :) Shoot, I should have taken a picture of the two girls together!

Frolicky Friday

Ack! I wrote this last Friday, saved as a draft and then just realized that I haven't added pictures and published it yet! Okay, here it goes!

***

Well, the last two Fridays we were on vacation. We definitely played a LOT with our kids! We had a blast!

Now we're back to our routines, and though we're not real busy people (intentionally), we do get caught up in the day to day stuff so easily! I have been purposing to play individually and as a group with my kids more, and it's been fun! But the *focus* day is Friday, so today.....

We had a picnic! Jacob decided he would be the photographer, but he didn't take pictures of people. Oh, well. I snapped a few.

That is MARKER all over his face! Ugh!

Just pizzas and Dr. Pepper....easy enough!

"What's going on up there?"

A couple of bees decided they wanted to try Jayla's Dr. Pepper. (The kids usually drink water or something non-caffeinated, but this was a fun picnic, so we all got one!) No one was scared, screaming or running away! I was so proud! :) The bees were friendly, we just left them alone and they eventually left the DP alone.

And here are a few pictures taken by Jacob and some OF him since he kept saying "Take a picture of me!" He's either hogging the camera or running away from it, there is no in between! LOL!

I wasn't feeling too great today, so I laid down with Jack for a nap. A little while after Myles got home, Jack, Jayla and I played Barbies for a while. Jayla is starting a new girls club since Jonathan is in a club with his good friend, Daniel. So I guess this was our first meeting, and Jack was our honored guest. :) Jacob came to join us eventually too. He just kept making his Barbie do flips. LOL!

The kids are all getting ready for bed now. We just finished playing some card games; War and Go Fish. I think Jonathan won them both.

That's about all I can take today, and I can't even sit here any longer, so I'm about to go to bed. We had fun though, and the kids want to keep playing! That's always a good sign. :) I think Myles may still be playing with Jonathan in the bedroom. Cool.