Tanner's Braces

How is it possible that I have a child old enough to be wearing braces. Completely crazy. 

Tanner got his braces on the week after Thanksgiving.
He only has the expander and the brackets on right now, but he will get the wire on after Christmas. 

The first few days have been a bit rough as he gets use to talking and eating with an expander, but all in all, I feel like Tanner has handled it like a champ. 

He was very brave when they placed the expander in his mouth. He said it hurt, but he held still and let them work. The orthodontic assistant kept making comments about how sweet and well mannered he was. It was so nice to hear. 

We sure love this boy and it's so fun to watch as he grows up and handles different challenges.
He's awesome. 

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

After Thanksgiving, we hung out with the family for a couple more days, but after the family left on Saturday night, we set up our tree. Then Sunday morning we were able to decorate it. The kids were very excited to help this year. I got some new decorations and I love the color scheme for our tree this year. 

Benson really loved crawling under the tree, pulling the ball ornaments off and then playing with them under the tree. He's such a stinker this year. 

His favorite ornaments are the huge ball ones that are as big as his head. He thinks they are toys and keeps trying to pull them off. 

Tucker took decorating more seriously this year and carefully placed each of his ornaments. We were cracking up watching this sweet OCD child of ours. 

Tanner was able to hang ornaments high on the tree and he helped Dad place the star. He's getting so big. 

Bailey really loved helping with the ribbon and the other decorations.

She's a really good helper when she wants to be.

We also managed to take our Christmas card picture. My friend Katie came over and snapped it for us. I love it. 

We didn't use this one on the card, but I just love it and wanted to include it. 

I also took some of just the kids. It was very difficult this year to get a picture of all them sitting and smiling, but I do love this one of them jumping together. 

And reading together. 

Benson, always the stinker. 

Tonight we got to go our Stake "Nativity and Noel". It's this awesome nativity display, complete with a live nativity and a musical performance. I've been wanting to go for years, but it always falls on drill weekend. Well this year, it fell on November 30 and December 1st, so Daddy was around for the Friday night performance. We had a great time. The kids loved seeing the hundreds of nativities from around the world and they really loved the live nativity. 

Afterwards we took the kids out for a delicious dinner of Chinese food. The kids were so well behaved and they all really enjoyed the food. It was such a fun night and the perfect way to kick off the holiday season. Tomorrow is December 1st and we are ready for all the fun that comes along with this time of the year. 

Thanksgiving with the Drake

Sadly, I lost most of my pictures from Thanksgiving day. The kids had a great time with their cousins. We had 21 people over, including one of Aunt Sarah's best friends and her little family. So there were 11 kids, ages 9 and younger and 10 adults. Pretty wild. 

I did have a picture of my table setting on my phone so there's that. 

And I have pictures of the kids table settings, but no actual pictures of the kids on Thanksgiving.
Kind of lame. 

Dinner was delicious and we had a great time visiting and hanging out together.

The kids played football in the backyards with the Dads while the moms prepped and cleaned.

It was a great thanksgiving despite the lack of photographic proof. 

The kids played thanksgiving bingo more than once. 

We also got to go see "Ralph Breaks the Internet" together after thanksgiving day. 

It was so cute! Chris stayed home with Benson because he's a monster at the theater. 

We had a great time with Nanny and Grandpa!

One morning Papa and I took the kids to get donuts too. We share our love of donuts with Papa so it seemed fitting to indulge together. 

Later that same day we took a cousins picture with all the kids in their matching pjs. They looked so adorable. And after some serious face swapping, I was able to get a cute picture of everyone!

Then we celebrated Papa's birthday with delicious pie and ice cream. The kids loved singing to him. 

The rest of the day was filled with playing and napping and chatting and it was such a great Thanksgiving. We feel so very blessed to be able to host it and have so much family near by. 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Our "FIRST Thanksgiving"

 Today we hosted our very own "First Thanksgiving" and it was so fun.
We invited the Fuhrimans and the Quales over and it was the perfect combination of friends.
Tanner had two friends his age, Bailey had two friends and Tucker had two friends and then of course there were the two babies.
All the kids came in costumes- either Native American or Pilgrim and they all looked so adorable. 

Once everyone arrived, we read a book about the first Thanksgiving. We learned a lot of cool details about the pilgrims and the Native Americans. The kids were pretty good listeners. 

Then we served dinner. I didn't get a picture of the food, but the kids really enjoyed it. We served an authentic "first thanksgiving" and it included: venison, clams, carrots, cabbage and potatoes, peas and cranberries. The kids surprisingly LOVED the clams. The big boys really loved the venison and the girls loved the cranberries. It was fun to hear what their favorites were and what they didn't like as much. Such a fun experience. 

Of course, we had to get a group shot of everyone in their cute costumes.
I seriously love everyone in their costumes. ADORABLE. 

And I got some of just my kids. 

I don't know if we will do this again next year, but it was a fun day with friends and we learned and experienced a lot. 

We have so much to be thankful for and I'm grateful for the time of the year and how it makes me focus on my blessings.