Happy Thanksgiving

November has been beautiful and BUSY! We have been having so much fun watching Blain's wrestling, listening to Chloe play the piano, playing at the park, visiting with family, counting our blessings and sneaking in a couple fun family activities. Here's a little bit of our last part of November.

Avenlea: It's so fun having Avenlea home most of the day! She is super helpful, plays with Zeyta really nicely, cuddles when I need it, and is so happy! She really does brighten my day everyday.

What was once puzzles for hours is now candyland (3-4 games per day), shimmer and shine game, and race to the treasure! She loves games and will even play against herself when I have to go do chores. She loves showing me when she pulls a special card or comes to me giggling when she pulls and ogre card.

More Candyland! She sets up the cards so all the special cards are on the bottom. It makes the game extra extra long getting plumpy when we are right next to king candy!

 Avenlea at the park where we had our photo shoot! She is still an amazing rock climber for her tiny little size!

Blain: This guy is full of energy! He does wrestling twice a week and gymnastics once a week and still has so much energy to burn. His gymnastics is going really good, he gets better each week and its so fun watching him learn all the mens apparatus skills. He recently started on the pommel horse and mushroom, and the parallel bars. He impresses his coach with his backward roll into a handstand and has the best cartwheel in his class of 14 boys.

He is still such a 6 year old boy, messing around every chance he gets!

The whole family comes to watch and cheer Blain on in his wrestling! He does really good shooting in and taking those boys down!

Blain's favorite move: The Swim Move

Nate has been pairing him with bigger/older boys so Blain will have some experience getting shot on and getting out of holds. This kid was super tough but Blain managed to just barely avoid getting pinned. It's hard on Blain emotionally to not "win" but he learned a lot in that match!

Getting his half nelson set up! Blain gets so excited telling me about his practices and recapping his matches. He tries really hard and does awesome!

Zeyta: I just love this sweetie! It's fun getting one on one time with her to run errands, play whatever she wants, and get plenty of hugs and kisses.

 Playing in Uncle Sammy's Jeep. We pretend to go on some pretty crazy adventures in that Jeep!

 Love this little mini me! My family is very quick to tell me zeyta looks just like I did, sounds just like I did, and throws tantrums just like me, lol!

 Just reading in a box, no big deal. Her favorite book right now is Brown Bear Brown Bear. We read it every day before naps and before bed.

 All geared up for the snow! It was more like hail and melted the next day. We have had really really warm weather for November and I'm loving every second of it that delays winter!

Chloe Rose: Chloe surprised me one day coming home with a trophy and a certificate! She won first place for her video on taking care of a farm. She will be competing against the other schools in her district next. I was pretty bummed that they just gave out the awards during class and that I couldn't be there to see her get the award but she was so happy showing me her trophy! She is so artistically talented with her awesome piano playing and beautiful art.

Chloe set a goal to win this competition last year and look at her now with that first place trophy!!

Chloe brought this home from school! She learned how to make 3D shapes in art class. I think it looks beautiful and so realistic!

The Farm: The cows are on only hay with the pasture pretty much gone. When it's been all day and they haven't had hay you'll see them out in the pasture finding little bits to eat but they've needed and gotten hay since the first week in november. We have a guest cow staying with us for a couple weeks while our neighbor gets ready to take her up to a family member's.  

 Not too much going on with the cows, we are getting Fancy Preg checked next week and she is giving 1/2 to 1 gallon per day. Nate milked her twice in a day and then I milked the next morning... we got SO much cream on the day I milked. I think she was holding back for those other 2 milkings because we had almost half the gallon jar full of cream! We are getting about 4 eggs per day and I've been letting the chickens out periodically. It makes me so sad when they have to stay in their run, but it's better than having dead chickens. So on days when Nate is out working in the evenings I'll let them out for some free range time.

Gone Fishing: With the weather so nice and the kids dying for an outdoor activity we decided to go fishing! We had phillip that day so we took all 5 kiddos fishing under the bridge in Charleston.

Going on a pokemon hunt! Phillip was a little fussy from being sick but he loved being in the stoller!

 This spot was perfect since the bank was so wide we didn't have to worry about kids going in the road or falling in deep water. Poor Nate is constantly untangling line and baiting hooks. He thinks this might be our last family trip for a while since he can't really help anyone fish with the constant need for his attention everywhere! He is going to focus on just taking the kids out one at a time.

Sweetie Avenlea wasn't super interested in fishing but she did cast her line out a couple times

 Zeyta left her pole in the water and went wading in her toes!

Chloe and Blain were very diligent in trying to catch a fish - unfortunately we didnt get anything but it was a fun couple hours

Happy Thanksgiving: We stayed 2 nights in Salt Lake at Molly and Jonny's House for Thanksgiving. We brought 2 different green bean casseroles, jello, and rolls. The whole dinner was delicious and it was really nice sitting down to dinner with all the adults. The "older" kids had a table that Nate made and the little ones sat around a little yellow one just their size! We played so many fun games including dominion, scrabble, hearts, settlers of catan, blokus, a pirate game and more! Chloe and Blain discovered Chess on Friday and were hooked, playing that almost the rest of the day. Most of us went out for a little Black Friday shopping but only Em and Jonny ended up with purchases. It was a great weekend spent together!

Cutie little girl table

 Nate carving the turkey

Big Kid table

watching movies while dinner cooks!

Speed Scrabble

 The day after Thanksgiving Jonny walked us over to the park down the road from their house. The day was so nice and the kids had a lot of fun on a new playground.

Zeyta of course getting lots of swinging in!

Blain pumping really high!

Phillip and Uncle Jonny

Shoulder rides from Daddy

 Love this picture of my sweet family

Chess Chess and more Chess - it's so funny to hear them arguing about the rules when neither one of them are right.

Once Avenlea discovered Molly's candyland she was down there all the time, didn't matter if nobody was playing with her at the time or not. The game board was slightly different than the one we have at home so I think she liked looking at the different pictures and characters

 Dog pile on Chloe!

Christmas Activities: For family night this week we wrote letters to Santa and went and bought our Christmas tree! The kids all did awesome drawing pictures and writing their letters to Santa, then telling us about it on video and sending it up to santa through the fire. We ran into a little trouble with the tree, the grocery store where we've gotten the tree for the past couple years changed ownership and didn't have any trees. We ended up going to a different store and then returning to Lee's for donuts!

She wants a gameboy with Wipeout game just like Milly

Avenlea wants shimmer and shine dolls just like Chloe

Zeyta wants a sucker from Santa!  

Blain wants a gameboy with pokemon game

 We found a beautiful 6 foot tree with really nice shape we all agreed on it!

Daddy holding all the babies! I try to get him to do this picture every year and he totally pulled it off with an impressive wall sit with 4 babies on him!

Yummy donuts! They all ate their treats, Zeyta ate her frosting off them gave the gooey mess to Daddy

 Cutie little Crazy with mismatched shoes!