Gobble Gobble

We started off the Thanksgiving holiday with Tyler getting in a little turkey bowl time while me, Owen and Collette took a bike ride (YAY! Finally got a bike trailer for the kids so we can go biking and running together again!) and prepped the house for Thanksgiving dinner.

This year we got together with four other couples. Since there were going to be 17 people in total, we decided to be super classy with our Thanksgiving decorations. We took some church tables, used some dollar store plastic table cloths (I have a $30 credit at my local dollar store. Who knew you couldn't return items to the dollar store, you could only get credit? Not me.)

Since I had one round tablecloth and one rectangle shaped tablecloth, we had to get creative to make sure we had tablecloth covering the whole table.

Should we pause here a moment to talk about my socks? This is what I look like when I mop my floors. Mismatched socks. Don't judge me.

I also got dollar store plates, cups and silverware and for decoration, we threw in the oreo cookie turkeys that Owen helped me make that morning.

 Owen helping but mostly eating all the peices of the oreo turkey. That's what happens when you make crafts with a two year old.

  I grew up with a tradition that I have tried to incorporate into our little family. It is called a Thankful box. You put it out at the beginning of November and whenever you feel thankful for something, you put it in the box. Then on Thanksgiving, right before you eat, you read everything in the box. Owen and I made our Thankful box at the beginning of the month and he and I would put thankful messages in it every few days. When our Thanksgiving company arrived, I explained to them that I would love for each of them to put something in the box as well so we could see what everyone else was thankful for. I also needed to remind Tyler to put something in there since he had passed it by each day without a glance this month. After the prayer I pulled out the Thankful box and started reading them. I soon noticed that nobody else had contributed to the box so I put it away and told everyone we should probably just go around the table and say what we were thankful for instead. I'm going to go ahead all call my friends out here... they all acted like this was something they had never heard of doing before. Is this not a Thanksgiving tradition? Come on people! Anyway, after the initial awkwardness of me forcing people to talk about what they were thankful for, the dinner was a success. Tyler had smoked a turkey for us and everything that everyone else brought was AMAZING. I love Thanksgiving. Yumm.

I'm sure you are all wondering what we had in our Thankful box right? Owen was thankful for pumpkins and crocodiles and his friends. Tyler was thankful for the thankful box and his hot wife (his words, not mine), his kids and great friends.  

And me... I'm so Thankful for Tyler. Even though Ty's work takes him away from us a lot, I am so grateful that he is such a hard worker and that he does so much for our family.  I'm so thankful for our kids and the amazing little people that they are. Lastly this year, I'm so thankful to have friends here who feel like family. Even though we couldn't be with family this year for the holiday, it was so great to have fantastic friends around to spend it with.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween

My mom, as I've said before is amazing at holidays. Especially Halloween. She always let us kids choose our own costumes and would do everything to help make us look the part. You may remember from this post that there were a few years when the costume didn't turn out as well as one might have hoped; however, she did come up with a lot of good costumes. When we were super young, she made a tweety bird and sylvester the cat costume for me and my brother. She also made us clown costumes, a rollerskating waitress costume, and a Bam Bam, Pebbles and Dino costume that has been used by every family member and every friend that I have. One year she even made me this cat costume (pictured below). She also made one for my favorite cabbage patch doll so we could dress up together.
Was I too old in this picture to be carrying around a cabbage patch doll everywhere I went?
 Probably.

So there were definite years of success.
She would always dress up as well. Even now, when none of her children live at home, she gets dressed up so when kids come knocking on the door, they won't be disappointed. I always dreamed I would be that same type of mother. I'm not. Every year I have these intentions of having great costumes for me, husband and children and then it's halloween day and I've barely given it a thought. This year, for weeks before Halloween,  Owen said he'd like to be a witch because he really wanted to ride a broom. Once I explained to him that brooms don't really fly, he changed his mind and wanted to be a cat. Much easier costume than the witch but still not as easy as the free dinosaur costume we borrowed from a friend (thanks Jos!). Tyler and I kept trying to hype up the dinosaur costume in hopes that Owen would be convinced that was what he wanted to be. On the night of our church trunk or treat, about an hour before the event, we got out all of the halloween costumes. We were super excited because Owen had in fact decided he wanted to be the dinosaur, until he saw his elmo costume from last year and couldn't be swayed. I went with my never fail deviled egg costume, Tyler threw on his old Sponge Bob costume and Collette dressed as "Zany Zebra" (that's what it said on the package that my mom sent us). No effort at all for any of us. I didn't even decorate our trunk for the trunk or treat. Lame I know.

 Someone brought animals to our trunk or treat. Not Halloween-ish but pretty fun for the kids. Also, I suck and didn't take any other pictures. I actually didn't even take these, Tyler took them with his phone.

On Halloween day my mom had a tradition of making homemade chili and breadsticks and then having donuts and caramel apples for dessert.
This was the extent of that tradition for us this year:

Yep, that's canned chili and breadsticks made out of pre-made bread dough.  Lame. I didn't even make donuts. Luckily for us, our friend Mckenzie made some that I ate the second I got to her place (they invited us over for trick or treating). Tyler got super creative with his costume and threw on a captains hat. Owen decided he really did want to be the dinosaur and Collette went for a bunny costume that our friend let us borrow. I didn't even think about putting on a costume. Seriously, not even the deviled egg costume and all I have to do for that is throw it over my head. 

We had such a blast with our friends. These are Owen's besties right now. McKay, Ella, Rylin and Kylee. Love these kids. Aren't they the cutest? I think so.

He did get a little sick of the dinosaur hat, which Tyler was super happy to carry around for him.

 He had such a great night and luckily both he and Collette are too young to realize I was sort of a disappointment for a mother on Halloween. Next year, I'm sure I'll be much more motivated to make everything from scratch, the chili, the beadsticks, maybe even the costumes.