Saturday, March 26, 2011

The Thanksgiving Post (even though it's March)

Yes, I am aware that this is really late, but get used to it- there's going to be a lot of these really late ones. :) I'm hoping my brain can remember everything. So, here we are at Thanksgiving. It was fun to have Missy and Brant and kids here before they moved to Montana a few weeks later. We are going to miss our quick visits in So. Cal with them, but we were so happy to be able to spend some last time with them before they moved. And a fun Thanksgiving it was. I think some of my pictures disappeared, but here it is:

Payton had Amelia's name for Christmas and Missy wanted some headbands for her. I was too excited to let her wait until Christmas to open them, so she got her present on Thanksgiving instead. I made her a bunch of interchangeable headbands and a Christmas tutu. Baylee had a matching tutu, but we never got our pictures of the two of them.

My niece, Shelby, with Baylee and another niece, Abby. They were both on top of her, but Shelby was such a good sport, as always, and hung out and watched t.v. with them while everyone waited for food to be done.

The food was finally ready! Here's the cute kiddie table. I was glad to be graduated from that table...
...to the more exciting adult table.
Payton kinda had his own little table next to the adult table. I think he liked his food. It was delicious. And to carry on my cupcake challenge for last year, I made pumpkin cupcakes with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. They were a little thick, but hopefully my pies made up for it. I made caramel apple, derby (kinda like a chocolate chip), and haupia (chocolate and coconut, but not the flaky coconut).

Baylee and Ben took a break before it was time for the white elephant exchange. The food must have been pretty good.

If you look closely, you can see Ben modeling his white elephant gift. He was pretty excited about it and I think Simon was pretty jealous. There were some great gifts in there. I ended up with some manly cologne called something like Macho, and Payton ended up with a tickle me Elmo. We had a lot of fun with family for Thanksgiving. It's always interesting with this group. I might need to go find those other pictures to prove it.

Missing is a picture of Missy, Laura, and me going through the Black Friday ads. The three of us, Kathy, and Shelby braved the crowds and hit Toys 'r Us that night. Kathy and Shelby were so great to wait in the craziness (and I do mean craziness-I think there was a fight in line) while Missy, Laura and I made a trip to Walmart. By the time we got back we were able to check out at Toys 'r Us. It was fun, but for lack of a better word, crazy!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

We're Back!

Yes, I realize that I am WAY behind on updates. My goal is to do at least one a weekend until I get all caught up. I hope I can do more since that will still take me quite awhile, but it's a good starting point, right? The biggest reason for not being updated is that we moved. So, since Ben takes the Mac to work and I haven't had the computer that we put all our pictures on (it is now here but with no internet), it's been a little challenging to get everything updated on here. Here's where that changes. So bear with me, there's going to be a lot to catch up on.

First things first: I'm sure most of you knew, but those who don't- we moved. Ben was laid off at the end of May. When the time came that he couldn't be picky anymore, he took a job back in the bay area (he's actually working for a different company now). He left in October, and the kids and I stayed until the middle of November.
It was very hard to leave our house, family and friends. To be honest, it's still hard on me. We are surviving though, and trying to catch up. We went back at the end of January/beginning February to get our house all packed up and clean. We have renters moving in next month, so hopefully we won't be living with Ben's parents too much longer. It's our goal to be adults again someday (hopefully sooner than later). Although if we are going to have to live with someone, they are great people to have to live with. We enjoy re-exploring and exploring the bay area again, and are ready to get life going again!