Thanksgiving with the Huffords 2016

We traveled down to Arkansas to have Thanksgiving with the Hufford/Allred/Malquist/Depner/Fields families. We went down the night before, so that we would have all morning to help with the cooking. I brought along my bread maker and all the ingredients for my rolls. 

Sometime in the middle of the night, it struck me that I was going to need to make A LOT of rolls to feed that many people. 

I decided I better get up early to get the first batch in. It wasn't too hard, since I was so nervous about it, I couldn't sleep anyway. 

Then I began the process of preparing a batch and then driving them over to John and Shannon's house to bake. The oven space at Jeans was spoken for. 

I love it when there are lots of moms and sisters in the kitchen all chopping and stirring and washing. Makes me feel at home. It makes me feel like part of a super family team!

Mat and Lori supervised turkeys that were cooking in the roasters out in the garage.

Grandpa Fields and Bart keep an eye on the football game.

Mark and John on the porch...probably hoping some kind of sports would start up.

Uncle Mat on standby for sports.

When is dinner??

Organizing the line up of dishes.

Sharing stories over turkey.

Ethan doing his spot-on impression of a texting teenager.

John and his newest pup, Camryn.

And the sports begin!

Lazy sports.  Leave it to the men to make up a game where they get to sit on their buns and catch the ball while the kids run all around.

The whole clan (those that could make it). Making the monkey faces and engaging in general hooliganism.

The cousins.

Hufford family...not my best, but good enough to count for the Christmas card! We are all in attendance. No one is doing violence to anyone else. Check and check.

All that turkey-eatin and sports-playing leads to only one thing:

Lot's of the cousins left for their homes and we had a nice quiet evening with Joe and Jean. The kids discovered BINGO and we played a dozen times, at least.

Then the little girls got to sleep in the best spot in the house:

Grandma's tree is extra special and magical. The perfect ending to a lovely day.

Curls

As a general rule, the girls do not allow me to do their hair. 

Pig tails, yes.  Pony tails, yes. The occasional "Heidi" braids, sure. 

But really doing a fancy do?

Very rare. But I love it! 

And I love that they all have totally different colors and textures.  Meg is super thick and golden brown. Laney is dark brown and soft (so easy to comb), with a nice wave. Anny is very blonde and fine. Everly is dark blond and grows super fast.

Isn't she a cutie? 

Service day

Today was Olathe City's service day. Our ward tries to coordinate each year so that we can reach out to people that aren't Mormon. Sometimes that's hard to do when you're so busy taking care of each other's needs.

So we were assigned to go rake leaves for a woman that was home-bound.

I couldn't imagine it taking very long. How many leaves could there possibly be?

There were a lot of leaves. 

But the kids all pitched in and we got it done in good time. Doing service never fails to make a day feel worthwhile.

And Laney found a treasure to bring home.

A heart leaf!

Preschool Co op. Anna's group

At the end of the summer, a small group of moms decided to form a preschool co op for our 4 year olds. Well, the truth is, I just mentioned it to Mari Guenther and she did the rest. She is amazing. So amazing, I fear I will be tempted to take advantage of her skills in the future to make all my passing fancies come to fruition.

It's a legitimate possibility.

So, we formed the group. And we decided I would teach the first couple weeks...because I'm the kind of person that really loves the beginnings of things and then I tend to lose steam towards the end.

I've accepted this about myself. 

So I was all set for teaching in August. And then I broke both of my arms are straight away knew that I wouldn't be teaching anybody anything. I wouldn't even be feeding myself. 

So I got bumped to the end and here I am in November, teaching the ABC's!

We have had fun doing lots of playdough.

And making our own snacks...

We've done some sorting and other cool ideas I found on Pinterest.

We made gingerbread men.

And strung up alphabet pasta.

We learned about traffic lights.

Seth and Kelston

Anna and Everly

Mallie.

We ate some traffic lights:

And just about anything else I could dig up in the pantry....marshmallow/goldfish sandwich, anyone?

We played lots of games and read lots of books. We went for walks and tried to identify bugs and plants and fairy houses.

 I learned a lot about keeping kids engaged and learning. Mainly that if you use a little imagination and lead out with excitement, they are all in. Every time. Sign them up.

Don't freak out.

You know, eventually every kid is going to come home from school with lice. 

It's a statistical probability. 

It's not your fault...so don't stress about it. 

The fact that there are that many types of lice shampoo at the grocery store tells you demand is high. 

It happens. 

Still, as you are combing little bugs out of your darling baby's hair, it is hard not to get the heebie jeebies. So, you might as well swallow your pride and march yourself in to the school so the nurse can take a look at your head.

It's gonna be hard. But then you can stop itching at the phantom bugs, or you can just treat yourself and move on with your life.

On the plus side, all the stuffed animals need to be bagged up and left alone for weeks. That is going to make picking up infinitely easier.

Fun with the make-ups

"We do the makeups, mom?"

Royals parade and a day at the zoo

To the delight of our neighbors, and those super loud people across Mur-Len, the Royals one the World Series! No, I'm glad too. I'm sure they're nice boys. 

All the locals went crazy! And now we can finally get some sleep after hosting and attending countless game watching parties.  I've had lots of snacks....more pretzel bites than I care to admit...and pretended to watch more baseball than ever before.

Now all we have left is the Royals Parade in downtown. 

Mark played hookie from work, school was cancelled and he took the boys downtown. 

It was crazy!

The parade was cool....if you could see it. Which they couldn't.

And they dyed the fountains blue. 

Mostly they did a lot of walking around in crowds. But someday they will be able to say that they were there and they were a part of that huge crowd.

I decided to take the girls up to the zoo for the day. Unfortunately, the zoo is is Swope Park and so was one of the bus stops for people going to the Royals Parade.  We were feeling pretty good about our choice to skip the madness.

We went to the Birds of Prey show (always fun).

And ate our low-fat pumpkin chocolate chip cookies we brought in the cooler and played with the stuffed snakes they convinced me to buy while we watched the sea lion show.

We rode out to Africa to see the chimpanzees and then back again for penguins and polar bear.

It was a nice full day and fun to spend it with my girls.