Thanksgiving Week Recap, Home Teachers and Farts

The kids had the whole week of Thanksgiving off.  It was a pretty relaxing week and went by too fast!  

The  Friday before Annie's Kindergarten Class had a FEAST.  I love that they make time for this kind of stuff.  

 I was pretty impressed with the Feast Table.  

Both Morning Kindergarten Classes...

Annie's Class were all Native Americans, and the other class were Pilgrims. 

Annie's Teacher, Ms. Kirby…or the CHIEF.  

Izzie as a Pilgrim. 

I dug up a picture of me at my Kindergarten Feast.  Can you imagine having candles these days at such an event?  

It was fun being at the school to see the big celebration.  Kindergarten is such a fun time. 

The days leading up to Thanksgiving were spent playing with cousins and friends.  Emmaline was sure nice to come over and entertain these two.  They sure love her.  

Life is always easier when we have Gunnar around to pass the hours.  These three can spend hours and hours together and I don't have to entertain them a bit.  Here they were doing a play for me.  It got a little violent so I told them they needed to go back to the screen writer and re-write the plot.  

Grandma is faithful about getting up and walking each morning.  She tried to recruit all of us on Thanksgiving morning and make it an official Turkey Trot.  All my kids were soundly sleeping, however, and I was not going to wake them.  So, it just ended up being the Pollards, Grandma, and me.  Oh, and Daisy, of course. (PS Nice face, Brett!) 

Jennifer and her four girls.  The fact that I made them stop in front of this house and take a picture was not by chance.  However, I will spare Abigail further humiliation.  (Also, take note, NO SNOW!  The weather this week was amazing!  It got up to almost 60F.  Hard to believe after this week of record freezing temperatures.)

We made it to Grandma and Grandpa's just in time for dinner.  Yum, I can smell it now. 

The "older" kids table. 

The Adults and the littles.  

I love this picture of the three little girls that day. 

Grandma always has fun crafts to keep the kids busy post-dinner.  This must be a Grandmother thing, Nana is always prepared with such activities for the kids too.  They love it and we love it because we can relax and talk with the adults.  

Sophie is concentrating hard. 

Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother's House we go! (This is how they went, holding onto the side of the car and telling us to go faster.  Notice no coats…I am not kidding.  It was practically CA weather!)

 We dropped in at our neighbors and friends house (The Webbs) for some pie, and then headed back to Grandma's for games and relaxing.  We watched the movie "42-The Jackie Robinson Story".  It was really good!  

Poor Grandma worked her tail off for two days preparing the dinner, and just like that it was over and then she probably cleaned up for two days.  We are so thankful for a fun day and a yummy feast! 

 We also missed all our family on both sides that were not with us.  We reminisced about past Thanksgivings spent in Las Vegas (both at Cade's and then at Uncle Doug's Wedding on the Strip), Arizona, at Nana's, in our old home in California, at Bear Lake, and in Salt Lake.  No matter where we are, we LOVE Thanksgiving!   

Next thing up on the agenda?  Take down the last of the Fall Decorations.  

It always make me sad cause I am weird like that.  Thank goodness we have Christmas to put up!  

While I cleaned and maintained the house with usually about eight kids running around,  these kids got pretty warn out from all their playing.   It was a nice break when they sat down to watch a movie and maybe even fall asleep.  (I think when Isabelle did this was actually the ONLY time, that's why I had to document it.)

Even though I love holidays, I love a nice Monday following a holiday to start putting the house back together.  SO much to do before Christmas hits, the following three weeks of kids in school are PRECIOUS!  

And, I leave you with one final picture.  I just love it….especially Isabelle's face and Sophie's giggle. 

Oh, and one more thing.  I had to let so much go this past weekend I could not even document it all.  And, I can't say I did the best job on my let go attitude.  A few quick things-

-Friday on the way out the door to the Ward Christmas Party we ran out to find a flat tire on our Suburban, our other car had died, and the roads were too terrible for the van.  We were about 35 minutes late for the party and the person we told we would give a ride gave up and got a ride without us.

-The next day it was discovered that HALF of the Christmas Tree had died.  Seriously, the top half was going brown.  I am telling you, live Christmas trees are NOT for the faint of heart. Ryan and Joshua had to take the whole thing down, load it back on top of the car (they said to get a refund we had to have the actual tree) and then drive about 12 miles back to the lot.  They had JUST enough time to get a new tree and rush back because we had had a Christmas Concert we were attending up in Rexburg. About the time I expected them home I received a call from Ryan, they had somehow locked the keys in the car while it was RUNNING.  Grandpa came to the rescue since I was scrambling getting all the kids ready for the Concert.  He drove some keys down to Ryan.  With some fast driving on icy roads, we made it to the concert on time.  Some yelling and gripping on my part might have taken place. BUT, we did have a WONDERFUL time!

-The Home Teacher wanted to come on Sunday.  I should have said it wasn't a good day.  Joshua was sick, we had tree stuff everywhere, and I just knew right after Church it would make for a chaotic visit. My premonitions were right.  First,  Michael "accidentally" farted while sitting next to the Home Teacher and it was so bad it could not be ignored.  Second, Luke and Annie were climbing every where and had to be asked to sit down about fifty times and that fifty is not an exaggeration. Last, but not least, Ryan FELL ASLEEP while the home teacher was talking. As in talking to him.  Like, laid down on his side, closed his eyes, and was out.  The HT looks at me, and then we both look back at Ryan, and we are like, "I guess he was tired."  So it was just me kicking it and talking and complete chaos everywhere.   We hit the jackpot as far as Home Teachers go, so I don't think we scared him off.

Let's just say I am recommitting to LET IT GO, come what may…farts on Home Teachers and all.