Thanksgiving 2012

This year for Thanksgiving we headed down to Yakima. We went down Wednesday and came back home Friday. We had Thanksgiving breakfast at my family's house, and the main dinner at the Nielsen house. Here's my top favorites from our holiday visit, followed by various pics I took during our stay:

1) The craziness in the house with all the kiddos running around and knowing the wonderful memories my boys will have with their cousins.

2) Emma helping me make a dessert for Thanksgiving.

3) Lewis finally warming up to me!!! He shared fruit from the fruit salad with me, had me read books to him before bedtime, gave me a nickname (unfortunately, can't remember what it was) and gave me loves before I left to head home! That kid is CUTE!

4) Painting Lewis' nails.

5) Dee's Lemon Meringue Pie (I WANT the recipe!)

Thanksgiving Feast

One of my duties as Room Parent for Kristjan's first grade class was to organize and set up the Thanksgiving Feast. Parents signed up to bring food and to help out during the party. My contribution to the party, besides organizing it, was turkey hats. The night before I crafted 27 of 'em. They were simple and easy to make. I received lots of compliments on them. The party took place on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving (the last day of school for that holiday week). We dished up 27 plates full with bite-size samples of all the food: turkey slices, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, stuffing, etc. Basically a traditional Thanksgiving meal. As the class ate, each student took a turn to say what they were grateful for.

All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth!!

Clifford finally lost is other front tooth! There's something about little kids with both front teeth missing that makes them look so adorable! It's hilarious hearing him try to say a "s" word. And many times we hear Kristjan yell at Clifford "Stop spitting on me!!" Poor kid can't help it when he talks :)

Cub Scout Fundraiser

Clifford and Kristjan recently participated in their Cub Scout fundraiser these past few weeks. Each family was asked to sell one box of See's candy bars (24 bars per box at $2 per bar). Our boys are so awesome. They didn't just sell one box, they sold 7 boxes!!!! That's 168 candy bars, for a total of $336!!! Yea, our boys are awesome!! (did I mention that already?! lol)

Clifford and Kristjan right before we took them around Peter's work to sell candy

SeaHawks Game

Peter and I went to our first SeaHawks game over Veterans Day weekend. Some distributors from work were in town, and Pete was asked to take them to the game. We were kid-free that weekend and excited to get out of the house! We arrived early to guarantee parking and walked around to kill time while we waited for the rest of our group to show up. We picked one of the many hotdog vendors there to have breakfast. YES-hotdogs for breakfast! And it was Y-U-M-M-Y! We then walked to the nearest Starbucks for a warm drink. It was crazy down there, seeing all the hard-core fans. It was entertaining to watch the people dressed in the opposing teams apparel and the heckling they received. The remainder of our group finally made it and we made it to our club seats just as the game started. Our experience at our first football game was amazing! We had drinks and garlic fries, and cheered with everyone else at all the awesome plays and touchdowns. The SeaHawks won the game. I told Pete I was hooked and wanted to come back again soon. I've now been to a Mariners game and a SeaHawks game. Hands down, I would choose football over baseball. There's a lot more action and cheering :)

Peter excited to go to the game!

The 'dogs, breakfast of champions

Peter and I enjoying our date at the game

Our View

Quick shot of Peter and his buddy James, who happened to be at the game too!

Halftime Show

TOUCHDOWN!

School Pics

Happy Halloween

I started Halloween off by putting on a Harvest Party in Kristjan's class (I think it sucks we can't call it Halloween in schools in fear of offending someone). I'm the Room Parent for his class, so I arranged details for the party. A handful of moms came to help out. I put together two crafts for the kids: a spider (using cutouts of their hands) and a pumpkin (out of a paper plate). Afterwards, they munched on a yummy snack, which included pumpkin sugar cookies I made for them. The kids had a blast! Many came up to me and told me it was the best day of their lives!! Too cute!!

After school got out and boys finished their homework, they got into their costumes for a third time in a week. I did their makeup along with their friends. The neighbor boy from upstairs even came down and asked if I would do his. As soon as it got dark, we headed out for Shane's house. He invited us to join his family and a few others from school to go trick-or-treating in their neighborhood. It was a lot of fun and luckily the rain stopped long enough for our outdoor adventure. Pete and I liked this neighborhood. We passed lots of other families from school on our trek out. It almost felt like a school event for us. All the kids in our group lasted an hour before wanting to stop. When we reached back to Shane's house, we parted ways. Boys immediately dumped their loot out onto the floor. We took out any unsafe candy for Kristjan for ourselves. We let them eat a few pieces of candy before putting it away. This year we stopped doing the Pumpkin King, only because Clifford snooped in our room and found the toys I had bought for it (I was ticked!!). Oh well. They had fun, which is all that matters :)

TipToe with Tarantulas

Last Saturday Pete had an all day Cub Scout training course, so I signed the boys up for TipToe with Tarantulas class. I'm not really sure what I was thinking when I signed them up, since I'm terribly afraid of spiders. Hope they realize the sacrifice I made to put my fears aside so they could have fun (haha). They learned all about tarantulas as well as touch one and its web. They also got to hold cockroaches, stick bugs and some sort of worm. Towards the end of the class, they made a few crafts before getting wrapped in a spider's web.