Happy Thanksgiving

We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family this year.  The family sure is growing.  It was definitely the year of babies.  We are so blessed and have so much to be thankful for.

The boys of course took their turns holding the babes as usual.

 

All the grandkids.  One more month and there will be one more little one to fit in here.

I hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in our chaos, stresses, don’t haves…..all of that doesn’t matter.  I truly have so much to be thankful for. 

In the evening Mom, Diane, Kristin, and myself met up and did our shopping.  It’s always so much fun.  I even made it to early Friday morning – pregnant and all.

Getting ready for the holidays

Thursday night was the annual Light Parade.  We did our traditional dinner at the Kitchen, decorating a cookie, and watching the light parade.  It was chilly out again.

 

In the first picture Matt is pointing to his head telling us that they are the smart ones waiting inside the warm restaurant, while the boys and I were toughing it outside in the cold.  In the second picture the boys are trying to stay warm.

 

Friday night was the ADD Festival of the Trees.  I really love this event.  It’s for such a great cause and seeing all the Christmas trees decorated gets me excited for Christmas.  In the past it has been something mom and I go to together for her work, but this year Matt also got a couple of tickets from work.  I realized that I haven’t taken too many pictures of myself being pregnant, so I’m glad we got this one.  In the first one check out my mom’s photo bomb!  Nice work mom- love it!  Oofta, you feel big and all when you’re 35 weeks pregnant, but don’t actually realize how big you truly are until you see yourself in pictures.

 

Today we got together to celebrate Christmas on my mom’s side.  This keeps getting harder and harder with everyone so busy, so they decided this year to try and do it in November and it was sort of a Thanksgiving/Christmas.  A lot of people were able to make it so that was fun.  

The siblings and the great grandkids (I think minus about 7-8).

 

We eat, play cards/games, play the dirty bingo dice game, and visit.  We are so blessed to have such a big and loving family.  I have some awesome memories of growing up with so many cousins!

Go Huskies

Well, the Huskies are in the state tournament again this year.  We made the trip up to the dome to watch the first game.  They beat St. Michael-Albertville27-7 and are headed to the state finals.

I won’t get all sentimental this time about how proud I am of my brothers! It’s so fun watching them and sharing in the excitement.  The boys have a blast with it all.  Even though it’s happening a lot more, it’s still hard when your oldest is at the stage of sitting by his friends!  It makes it easy though when he has such terrific friends.  Such great kids.

We’re already excited for the championship game.  Go Huskies!

It’s November already?

 

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate doing laundry? I really do.  It is never ending.  We get all the clothes washed, folded, and put away, and it starts all over within minutes.  One of the things we do with socks is when we’re folding clothes we put them in a basket and collect all of them over time.  The boys then help match them and fold them.  They love it  (insert sarcasm!).  I have also finally let things go a little.  While we’re folding, everyone has their own basket that the folded clothes go into and then when all the clothes are done the boys put their own clothes away.  I used to struggle with this because they would just throw the clothes in their drawers and they would get all wrinkly.  After trying to show them a few pointers, I have now let it go because it’s not a battle I want to struggle with and they are putting their clothes away and that is what matters, right!

 

In 2nd grade the students pick a saint, do a little research on them, and then give a little presentation acting like the saint.  Jacob chose none other than, St. Jacob!  He did a great job with his research.  Something I have learned about Jacob is he is a doer.  He wants to do his jobs/homework and get it done.  I love that about him, however we have to sometimes talk about slowing down, doing a good job, and putting effort into it.  When it came to the day of the presentations he got a little nervous, but I was so proud of him.  He has come a long way with his anxiety in front of people.  So proud of you buddy.

 

I truly love that my boys are able to go to school and do these type of things daily!  What a blessing.

 

Our MOPS group here in town was doing a fundraiser where you could go get some old fashioned pictures taken.  You paid a small fee and would get a 11x14 picture out of it.  The boys had a blast doing it and choosing all the props and costumes. I was happy how it all went that night, but had no idea how happy I would be when they came in.  Ugh…I went in determined to only get my free picture, however I couldn’t resist or leave them behind.  I thought they were so cute, I’m not sure Matt thought they were so cute when he found out how much I spent.  Oops.

Love this picture….will we have a another boy or a girl to join this team here soon in December?

Love these boys.

Happy Halloween

 

Halloween looked a little different  for us this year.  It started off the same – the kids go to Mary’s after school and she has a Halloween party and feeds them.  Have I mentioned how awesome and helpful this is.  She is the best.  Matt and I picked them up and we made a few stops to our regular family members and friends that like the boys to stop over.

 

Then we headed around a couple of neighborhoods.  This was the first year that Connor met up with a friend and went walking around with him.  Nolan started looking a little out of it and said he wasn’t feeling well, so he ended up staying in the van with me while Lucas and Jacob continued on with their trick or treating.  Jacob wanted to take Nolan’s pumpkin around for him so he could still get some candy.  You’ll notice he has two pumpkins in his hands.  Everyone was so nice about it too.

 

You can’t end the night without dumping out your stash, sorting, and trading!  We have enough candy to last us until next year, or two!

 

This year it was wonderful not having school on the day after Halloween.  Someone was thinking when they made our schedule for the year!

This poor guy is still not feeling well today.

Hope everyone had a great Halloween.