Day-After-Thanksgiving Fun

This picture was actually from Thanksgiving night, but I thought is was so cute that Carter likes to hold the scriptures and help "read" them during our family scriptures and prayers at night.  He's getting so big!

 I headed out as early as my body would let me to grab some Black Friday deals and Tristan stayed home with the three boys and tackled the leaves that we had been neglecting (sooooo glad we don't have to do the yard maintenance at our new house).  He got some pretty cute pictures of the boys having fun in the leaves.

Tackling each other...these boys love to play rough!

 Love that smile.  And that kid.

 Of course, there was some throwing of the leaves as well.

 Ethan made a "leaf angel".

 Buried in leaves!

 I managed to find some Christmas jammies.  Our Elf comes the day after Thanksgiving so we can spend as much time as possible enjoying our Christmas traditions.  They boys were excited to wear them (and still like to wear them even in March).

They were pooped out that night and once I looked at the pictures on the camera I realized why!  I was so excited to start the holiday festivities with my family!

Thanksgiving

It seemed like everybody was kind of up in the air about their Thanksgiving plans, so I decided to be crazy and offer to host Thanksgiving this year--with a newborn baby....Luckily, I delegated and had a lot of help from family and it ended up working out great. I had relatively little that I was responsible for cooking.  That meant I still got to enjoy my morning with my family watching the Macy's parade and could accomplish what I needed to do on commercial breaks.  ;)   I was really appreciative of everything everyone did to help out.

The table all set for the feast

Grandma Bernard brought some fun treats to keep the kids busy while we finished getting dinner ready:

We had attempted these Oreo turkeys earlier in the month but I forgot to buy double stuff Oreos and they didn't work very well.  I was glad the boys got the chance to make them again.  :)

They also made some gumdrop turkeys.
Carter with his gumdrop turkey

Ethan is obviously super thrilled about Oreos--he'll tell anyone that will listen how much he loves chocolate.  Especially Oreos.

Enjoying the fruits of their labor

Aunt Desiree being entertained by the crazy boys

I found these fun turkey crafts at Michael's so the boys did them as well.  It was kind of tedious work for Carter's little fingers, but luckily he had Grandma for a helper!

My mom, dad and brother also came, but between dinner, clean up and crafting I just didn't do well taking pictures this year.  Oh well, I guess that means I can only do better next year!  :)  We were grateful to get to spend time with both sides of our family for Thanksgiving this year and for the fun memories!

November Pictures

We started off the month of November blessing Ashton.  We were glad to share the day with Rich and Allisha who were blessing Cody as well.  Our friend, Christie Marlatt (who did our family pictures last year) was there and she was nice enough to snap a few pictures for us with her camera.

 Ashton was about a month and a half old in this picture.

The whole crew!  I think Ethan's hands are funny in this picture.  He likes to talk with his hands and he was super excited to take a picture with his buddies Skyler and Dylan and so I'm pretty sure he was starting to say something.  Love my silly boy!

We were grateful that both my mom and dad and Tristan's family were able to make it for the blessing as well.  We snapped some pictures with the grandparents and aunts and uncles since we were all together.

My mom and dad with the boys

 Desiree, Annette, Nicole and Kelsey with the boys.  I love how Ashton's hands was up in the air.  Like he's saying, "Don't forget me!"

 Poor lighting, but here's an "awake picture" from later in the day.

 The boys love their little brother and like to help as much as I will let them.  Carter especially loves to help hold his bottle for him.

 Grandma Bernard brought over some yummy chocolate cake one night and, as you can see, Carter loved it!

 When Tristan is gone the boys get creative in their indoor play...they really like to use my pots and pans as drums.  This is the scene many days at our house...

 Look at that enthusiasm.  Maybe they'll take after their Uncle Kelsey and play the drums when they're older.

 This is Ashton at about 2 months.  At this point he started to get super smiley and has stayed that way. This was the best shot I could get that day.

 Poor lighting, but a cute little face!

 Tristan volunteers at the volunteer fire department when he's in Louisiana.  They had an event one evening while he was there and he brought back some goodies for the boys, including these fun fire hats.

 There were also toy cars (a big hit around here) and rubber ducks along with some coloring books.  The boys were really excited by the presents dad brought home with him.

End of Fall Fun

We had a beautiful Fall this year.  We didn't have much rainy weather so we got to enjoy being outside.  There was one afternoon that was SUPER windy.  We couldn't find our kites, so we improvised and tied some string to plastic bags.  The boys had lots of fun catching wind in them and running around burning lots of energy. I had to stay in with little Ashton, but I had fun looking at the pictures and watching out the window!

 Pure joy!

 Another afternoon I decided to take the boys out to take advantage of the leaves blown down by all of that wind.  We went on a "leaf hunt" to make some wreaths out of leaves later on that afternoon.

Ethan found a big one!

 Exploring together!

 Cheese!

 The colors were so pretty and there were so many to choose from.

 One afternoon Tristan took the boys out to explore the woods and burn some energy.  He got some beautiful shots of the scenery.  I love how beautiful it is here!

 They boys had lots of fun exploring.

I'm so glad that my boys love to be outside, no matter what the weather.  It's fun to see them enjoy playing outside together!

Halloween

We were glad to have Tristan home for Halloween.  We started out the day with a few fun plans, but ended up having a jam-packed day!

I got some special cereal for breakfast to have with some "ghost bananas".

 That's one happy boy over that chocolate cereal!

 Allisha and I had been trying to coordinate a get together so I could meet little Cody (born a couple of weeks after Ashton).  Halloween ended up being a good day, so we had the boys over.  They played, watched a Halloween movie and joined us for our traditional Halloween lunch--mummy dogs!

 Allisha and I got some time to visit and play with the babies while the boys were busy playing.

 Ethan had preschool that afternoon and afterward we headed over to my parents' house to go trick-or-treating.  We didn't stay long (and shamefully didn't take any pictures) because we had been invited to the Madill's to have pizza.  We headed over to their house and had fun visiting and eating and we got a quick family shot while we were there.  The boys chose matching army costumes, so we decided to get in on the fun as a family.

 After pizza we headed over to the church for the annual trunk-or-treat.  Standing at attention while they waited for the signal to go get that candy!

 I love how they are grinning at their dad and brother in this one!

After trunk-or-treating we headed over to the Nelson's house for some hot scones fresh out of their garage.  They are so nice to do it for all of the trick-or-treaters that come through their neighborhood.  They are super yummy and we got to visit with some of our favorite people.  Finally, we were off to Tristan's mom's house to do some trick-or-treating there.  She had lots of fun snacks waiting for them (again, no pictures...).  After our visit we were all pretty wiped out from all of the fun so we headed home for bed.  It was a great day and the boys talked about Halloween for days afterward!