Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went to our friends, the Baker's, for Thanksgiving.  They just bought a house out in Gate's Mills (I am totally jealous!) and invited us to come and spend the holiday with them and some of their cousins.  Justin decided that everyone is too full on Thanksgiving to really enjoy the pies so he started a "pie night" the night before Thanksgiving.  There were so many pies, so many choices...

Chocolate Banana Cream (pie crust, layer of chocolate, later of banana, layer of pudding drissled with chocolate)

Grandma Christensen's Lemon Meringue

THE BEST APPLE PIE (cinnamon roll crust, fresh apple pie filling, topped with crisp topping)

A FLOP this was suppose to be a caramel pumpkin pie

There were so many pies to choose from those are just the ones that I made.

We had quite the feast for Thanksgiving, we had everyone's favorite holiday dishes...

corn

rolls

sweet potatoes

turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce

colorful sweet potatoes

relish tray

Sitting down to dinner

Lots of fun

Nathanial and Christopher

Emily

In all there were four families there, the Baker's (Justin, Angela, Anela, Wyatt, and Drostan), Andrew and Susan with their little boy Grayer, and Thomas and Janelle with their little boy Isaac.  It really was a memorable Thanksgiving.

The girls snuck out later that evening to hit some of the Black Friday deals.  It was a lot of fun and we all were able to get what we were looking for.

November

We are in a date night group with 2 other families, it is the BEST thing ever!  We go out every other Friday night and all we have to do in return is watch the kids every third date night. Totally worth it!  Plus we love all the kids that we watch.

On Friday, November 16th we watched "Brave" with the kids and after they watched the movie they gathered up all of Christopher's weapons and headed downstairs to reenact the movie. I had the great idea of having Ryan take down Christopher's HUGE bear.  It was a great hit, the kids had so much fun!

Emily 18th Months

Playing in the puddles on November 12th

Emily's 18-month stats:

Height: 30 1/4 inches (10th percentile)

Weight: 19 lbs 6 oz (10th percentile)

Head Circumference:  45 cm (15th percentile)

I cannot believe that our baby girl is 18 months old already.  She started nursery and loves it.  She goes in willingly and already has a favorite spot in the room, a small house in the corner.  We are so lucky to have Emily in our family.  She is such a joy to have, she is our Little Millie May!

"Shmashed" potato Emily (Nov.19)

Halloween

We had a few weeks to celebrate Halloween this year.  There is an AMAZING sister in our ward who set up a free photo shoot for anyone who wanted to come to get their kids' picture taken in their costumes .  Here is her website: www.beoriginalphotography.com

Thor, Mario, and Tinkerbell

On Saturday, October 27th was our Church Halloween carnival put on by our youth.  They did an amazing job! There was a pumpkin carving contest so Ryan worked all day to finish his masterpiece...

It took first place, way to go Ryan!

Nathanial and I worked on this Lego pumpkin, it turned out really cute and the kids loved playing with it...

fishing

Mario and Luigi

mini-golf

spider

ghost bowling

Case Alliance Dental Association (CADA, aka the dental wives) had their annual Halloween Carnival on the 19th...

Halloween (October 31st) started out with fun and games in preschool...

Captain America, M&M, Luigi, Ninja, Fairy Princess, Cinderella bride, Captain America, and Darth Vader

After preschool we headed over to Nathanial's school for their costume parade.  Due to Hurricane Sandy the event had to be held inside.  The students were supposed to dress up as their favorite storybook character, Nathanial chose Harry Potter.  I thought that he could use his costume from last year but apparently he has grown too much so the night before I made him this one...

Also, due to the hurricane trick-or-treating was rescheduled until Sunday, November 4th so we didn't go.  But we did pass out candy and since it was on Sunday we also gave out Missionary pass-along cards too :)