Giving Thanks!

Oh man! There are just so many great holidays this time of year! I am already so excited to decorate for Christmas and start wrapping presents! However, lets not get ahead of ourselves! First, we need to talk about Thanksgiving!

This year Ryan and I decided to do Thanksgiving ourselves. We could not make it home to be with our families and we decided that we would rather not spend our Thanksgiving with the bishop and his family. They are wonderful people and we are grateful that they thought about us, but we just wanted to do it ourselves this year!

When we went to the store to get all of our Thanksgiving goodies they were having a "Turkey Bowl". They had pringles cans set up like pins and rolls of toilet paper to throw at them. If you knocked them all down you won a turkey. Well, Ryan and I both tried and failed. Then it was Emma's turn. They let her stand halfway down the lane so that she was closer to the pins and she threw her two rolls.... and she missed.... but I guess they just thought that she deserved to try again... and again... and again... lol She ended up throwing 6 rolls. But she not only threw them she rolled, threw and even kicked some but could not even get them to the pins. lol I guess they either felt bad for her or they just could not resist how excited she was! lol Anyways, I told her good job and we got up to go finish our shopping and the lady said "Here, she gets one for effort!" and handed us a 12lb turkey! lol It was pretty funny!

Anyways, Thanksgiving morning we had a light breakfast and then played some games together. We had bought some new ones so it was pretty fun. Emma had a blast (after Ryan ran and got the batteries that I forgot... whoops..)!

Helping Daddy put together the game.

Waiting for it to start!

Here come the butterflies!

She caught one!!!

After we played games we made paper snowflakes to decorate our house with for Christmas and then it was time for Emma's nap and some serious cooking.

Emma was not too thrilled with the idea of me cooking her prized turkey! She thought it would be a better idea just to keep it in the fridge and look at it! So we had to wait till after she was down for her nap to go ahead and prepare it! lol Neither Ryan or I had any idea what we were doing so we got on the internet and did some research. We ended up buttering it inside and out and between the skin and meat. After which we stuffed it with apples, oranges and an onion.

 Ready to be cooked!

 4 hours later!

 Carving our Turkey!

 Our feast! Needless to say there were plenty of leftovers!

(pic. won't rotate for some reason... sorry!)

 Emma ready for the blessing!

 Ryan is ready to eat!

Even Bella had a feast. Turkey heart, liver and gizzard! (Eeewww!!)

Our dinner turned out wonderfully and we really enjoyed the day together as a family!

Happy (Late) Halloween!

Ok Ok! I know that I am a slacker! I should have posted these at least before Thanksgiving but I didn't so here they are!

Every year as far back as I can remember on Halloween my Mom always made soup or chili or something like it for dinner before we went out Trick-Or-Treating! I always loved it so this year we had tomato soup with popcorn. Emma really liked it! :)

For Halloween this year we bought Emma a cute little fairy costume and a little wand. However, every time I tried to get her to try it on she would scream and run away. Well one of her friends had a little costume party and so we took it with us thinking that if she saw all the other kids dressing up in their costumes she would want to also. No such luck. However, her little friend Maddie also had a costume that she hated because she wanted to be a fairy like her sister. As soon as Emma saw Maddie's costume she fell in love! So, in a n effort to make the children happy we offered them a solution. This year Maddie went as a fairy and Emma got to be an...

Elephant!

We went to the Trunk-Or-Treat at the church and Emma loved it! Once she realized that all she had to do was say "Trick-or-treat" and people put candy in her bucket it became the greatest holiday EVER! She still says it every now and again hoping i'll cave and giver her a piece of candy!

Even though Ryan and I did not dress up Emma was not alone! Bella went as a Mummy! lol

After we got home from the Trunk-or-treat we watched a movie and handed out candy, which Emma did not think was quite as fun as getting it but she did really like seeing all the kids in costumes coming to the door! (She still gets excited every time someone knocks on the door!) It turned out to be a great Halloween and a lot of fun!