It's our year to have Ethan and Kassie for Thanksgiving! Next year we get Christmas!
Mathew won't make it, he's having his last Thanksgiving in Idaho with his best friend, Damian. I'm happy that he's got people there that he will miss and that will miss him.
We will make our assigned dishes and head over to the Flynns, as we do.
Winnie is front and center, helping me with ham, rolls and chocolate lasagna.
She drives me a little batty, but that little warm bird belly on my forehead is pretty adorable, too. And she has an excellent vantage point hanging from my hair.
The Spread
The Friends (Laney is taking the photo)
Aidan's brave debut of his most recently learned chords...I do believe it was the infant stages of The Sweater Song.
Some high caliber chillin
Kylie, Miranda, and Emma took Laney, AJ and Everly to see Wicked at the movie theater. So we made our way to the basement to watch Fall Guy. It is and will always be one of my favorites.
Silliness!
We went home full, happy and entertained. It was a perfect day!
We have three movies we want to see this summer: IF, Inside Out 2, and The Quiet Place - Day One.
One of those movies with give Everly nightmares for the foreseeable future, so we'll catch that one later.
We decided to go back to back on the other two! That's a first for us, but if you think about it, it's pretty smart because you can make the most of the refillable drinks and popcorn!
It only took me 20 years, but I finally found a wonderful recipe for sugar cookies! It was a total winner, crumbly, sweet, no weird aftertaste....I promptly immortalized it by writing it down and putting it in our official recipe box.
I mixed the dough in beautiful Sunday Silence...and then they came up one by one to cut out a few of their favorites.
Frosting and sprinkles!
We packed some of them up and headed to the Flynns for a surprise movie night. Last night we were hanging out together and Laney was obsessed with a movie trailer for Wolf Walkers. She showed it to anyone willing to watch. We looked it up to see when and how it would be released. It turns out that that the only way to watch it was on AppleTV...which we cancelled about 3 weeks ago. She was so bummed! I reassured her that sooner or later it would be put on Netflix or we'd be able to check it out to the library. She spent the rest of the evening moping about. The world had ended.
Then this morning, Courtney text and said that they were going to sign up for a free trial of AppleTV and wondered if we'd like to come over and watch? I knew that Laney would be over the moon! We took our plate of cookies and went on over. Laney didn't know what we'd be watching and was so surprised when she was handed a ticket Todd printed out with the showtime and Wolfwalkers printed on it. She was so excited! She and the girls screamed and jumped up and down! What wonderful friends we have!
And I know this thing for sure...never in the history of wolf-loving girls and movies has there been a sweeter combination. This movie held her enraptured from start to finish! It's one of my favorite memories of this Christmas season!
Anna's friend party was last weekend, but that doesn't mean we won't mark the day with some fun times together and a dinner and cake of her choice.
She woke up to a big box of Lucky Charms to share with her siblings. Strict instructions were given to eat the brown "healthy bits" along with the radioactive marshmallows. I mean, that's just common sense.
We hit a matinee of Frozen 2 and LOVED LOVED LOVED it. It's our new favorite! It's always extra nice to get our money's worth out of the popcorn and soda refills. Big families are singlehandedly keeping movie theaters from going straight to H-E-double toothpicks with their cheaty ways.
Restoring balance to the universe.
We opted out of Christmas decorating and enjoyed a simple day of not shopping on Black Friday. Anna asked for a pot roast with all the fixins for her birthday meal. Luckily we had about 3 dozen rolls leftover from Thanksgiving yesterday. Dad popped the roast in the oven while we were at the movie. I baked her cake at the Flynns because our roast recipe takes 6 HOURS to cook. It's worth every minute.
Anna wanted to help frost her cake and light her candles. Getting bigger has it's perks. Wielding fire is the best one.
Just as we were ready to sing, she had a great idea....what if we sing each line and then she sings the last word? She felt like it would be awesome and who are we to shy away from birthday silliness?
Ha ha!
We wolfed down are cake and Anna ripped open her presents! She got a boogie board! Now she can sketch paperless with her two sisters! I think her favorite gift was her new scrunchie collection. She doesn't wear them in her hair, but on her wrist....because fashion.
Her Grandma Kathleen sent her a beautiful porcelain box and she was instantly in love. It even had a pretty bracelet already inside!
Next stop was a family night sing along with Mark's band. The have no name....because they simply can't decide.... but at this point, I'm thinking it's a tie between Split Decision and Lemonwrench.
Megan played keys for "Closing Time" and killed it. She doesn't relish the attention, but she always has that spark in her eye and a tiny smile that she can't help getting when she is doing something fun and getting in on the action.
Mathew stepped up to the mic for "Island in the Sun". He honors our family allegiance to all things Weezer.
It was SUCH a long day. And so fun. I love these days full of family and music and new friends.
We hit Crossfit Lehi this morning. It was a cool facility, but oddly laid out. there was a wall right down the middle, forcing the coach to walk back and forth to see both sides and try to watch everyone. But she was good at it and we liked the workout. No good t-shirts to buy, so that was dissappointing. Mark's Father's Day gift this year was to visit all these gyms and buy a t-shirt at each one (and sometimes one for me...he's so generous!)
Mom wanted to treat the kids to a movie, so we grabbed tickets to Aladdin at the theater in Spanish Fork and went to see a matinee. We loved it! Which is a huge relief, because I really didn't love the cartoon one.
And just to make sure we watched all the movies in one day, we drove up to the Redwood Drive-in and met Bri and her family for Toy Story 4. We listened to our new favorite music all the way: muscials! Mom said she loved it!
Megan tucked safely into the trunk....any power supply is a good power supply.
Remind me again why we pay money to watch movies on the concrete? I had to restart the car every 20 minutes because the auxiliary power was trying to save me from having to get a jump start.
It feels like it has the makings of a solid advent tradition....except for one thing...The Polar Express is kind of a weird movie. I mean, I kinda like it, but their teeth are just strange! It's hard to look at it for that long.
But the jammie thing is super exciting for the kids and that leads me to question...why don't we just wear our jammies to a movie we actually want to see? What are they gonna do? They can't kick us out...because its almost impossible to distinguish regular clothes from jammies anyway.
I think I am on to something here.
The Terrys and Wadas came with us this year. We decided to grab some pizza at the Crown Center after the movie. The Crown Center is just a fancy mall. So we paid a ridiculous amount of money for pizza that could have been delicious, but wasn't because kids only want cheese and sauce. You're killin me Smalls!
But hey, memories are being made.
Mathew liked it!
Then we walked over to Union Station using The Link...the enclosed bridges that span the several blocks between them.
Megan and Mathew always have fun together.
No Ethan in this photo, and Mathew is pulling a face, but I'd say it's pretty representative.
Mark and I went to see "The Greatest Showman" with several other couples a few weeks ago . I'll admit that I hadn't actually wanted to see it and really we just went because we were invited and we'll jump at any opportunity to get out of the house and go on a date. Then we sat down and the singing started. This movie is ALL IN with the singing and dancing.
Mark leaned in and said "How much did we pay for these tickets?"
I replied, "5 bucks?" and then he said "Okay, that's a five dollar nap" and closed his eyes.
I was raised on Gilbert and Sullivan and have no problem with a little singing and dancing, but even I needed about 20 minutes to fully accept the no-holds-barred exuberance and romance that was coming at me from the screen.
Once I did, though. Oh baby! I loved it.
And I even caught mark tapping his foot and decidedly not napping.
Last night Megan asked me for the 14th time when I would take her to see it and reminded me that I had promised her and all her friends had seen it and she was dying inside and why wouldn't I just freaking take her???
So we had dinner and FHE and put all the pups to bed and we hopped in the car to go the 9:30 showing. That's 9:30 PM on a Monday night, folks.
We had the entire IMAX theater to ourselves. It was huge and it was loud and Megan loved it! I loved it too. I already knew what we were getting into and so it was fun to embrace it from the beginning. Everytime the music really got cooking and those big numbers were in full swing, she would grin at me and say 'I love this!!!" and she'd dance around in her seat and throw her arms up into the air.
She's the person you want to see a musical with.
When I finally climbed into bed at midnight, Mark asked sleepily, "Where did you go?"
1. Up at 6:30. Too early, but not completely unreasonable.
2. Kids lay out their blankets, establishing their gift unwrapping territory.
3. Kids largely underwhelmed by the stockings this year. Looks like Santa ran out of money, energy or both.
4. Let the materialism begin!
Ethan.....so much weaponry. (airsoft) (not real) (we don't want to be a Dateline special)
Mathew... so much gaming. He loves the Switch. And it loves him right back.
Megan....received our family's FOURTH ukulele. But the best reaction was for her very own copy of The Outsiders. Stay gold, Pony Boy!!
Laney finally has access to her own music and a couple (pre-approved) movies. She can veg out and join the ranks of those who can legitimately claim that they can't hear me calling them up to do chores.
Anna got a Nutcracker! She's been asking for one for years. I finally gave in and she's pretty thrilled about it.
Everly loved the castle! She loved all the sparkly parts and immediately started playing with all the Frozen characters and converted furniture. I am so glad it worked out!
Mark and I failed to capture each other in any pictures....which isn't that surprising. Mark bought me several thoughtful gifts. My favorite was three fruit trees to be delivered in the spring: a Pink Lady apple, Grand Gala apple and an apricot. I'm so excited!!
Mark got lots of stuff for his garage gym...all Rogue, of course. And some new jeans (which are technically a gift for me...wink wink)
We packed the kids up after our late breakfast and went to see Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. It's the first time we've gone to the movies on Christmas and it was really fun! The kids are getting older and able to sit through a movie. I think it will be something we do again.
Back home again and the all scattered. Some doing art, other's playing video games or setting up airsoft guns.
I got to work on my new Christmas puzzles. Mark came by now and again to help me work my way through the huge box of Aglamesis chocolates.
