Happy Turkey Day!

We had a GREAT Thanksgiving 2010! I have so so so much to be thankful for, especially these little turkeys!

We made the paper turkey's at preschool and then we made cute cupcake turkeys for everyone on Thanksgiving.

Look at that concentration! (from both of them!)

Such cute turkeys! My little guys ate theirs for dessert after our Thanksgiving feast, & everyone else was able to take theirs home.

We had Thanksgiving at our house this year. Here's Brandon's fam. minus Mike, Jen, Morgan, Jordyn, Kelsey, & Ryan. Brandon & I made the turkey's this year for the first time. I roasted mine in the oven & I was pleasantly surprised how good it was! But, Brandon's took the cake (or turkey). He smoked it and it was the. best. turkey. ever! Good job, honey! That will be a tradition every year now!

It was a great Thanksgiving this year! The only thing that would have made it better would be to have my family there, but I am grateful we live close to at least one of our families! Hosting Thanksgiving wasn't as hard or stressful as I thought it would be & would LOVE to do it again!

P.S. Brandon wanted me to add that he participated in the craziness called Black Friday shopping this year (that's totally unheard of. He usually HATES shopping). He got his game face on, became crazy like all the other shoppers (he said the women were the most aggressive & pushy) and scored us a 40" t.v. for under $300! (he got the 3rd to the last one!) Good job! I think maybe, just maybe my love of shopping might be rubbing off on him?.... well, probably not, but he did a good job early, early this morning!

Gilbert House

We didn't have preschool this week, so we ventured to the Gilbert House with a couple of Porter & Hudson's friends. This was our first time to explore the several houses.

Doing some Grocery Shoppin'

Bubble Poppin'

Cow milkin'

and Feedin'

Game Playin'

Dressin' Up

Train Watchin'

and Slidin'!

Let It Snow???

Anytime it snows here, we try to take advantage of it because it doesn't happen very often. Well, this "snow storm" had been talked about for days & this is what we got:

My kiddos were still excited and wanted to go play in it, so we got in all our snow clothes that we don't get to wear very often & headed outside.

They had tons of fun playing in the "snow"! :)

Maybe, just maybe we will get a real snow storm this year!

Our Hudson

It's hard to believe that our little Hudson is 2 years old! He's supposed to be our baby, but he is sure wanting to be a big boy. He is talking like crazy & keeps up with everything his big brother is doing. He LOVES Porter and looks up to him. They are best friends.

Hudson's 2 yr old stats:
Height: 35 in.- 90%
Weight: 28 lbs- 70%

He is just so cute I just want to squeeze him sometimes! He came to me like this while playing outside with a football saying "Hemet, hemet!" (helmet) Brandon was really proud of him for that!

Speaking of squeezing him, sometimes I want to squeeze him not in a good way! For some reason, he has not been sleeping very well. Depending on the day, he will take HOURS to fall asleep for nap & bedtime!!! This is driving me crazy. Sometimes he doesn't even fall asleep at all for nap. I am definitely not ready for a non-napping child! He's barely 2 for heavens sake! When he finally does fall asleep, it's usually not on his bed. Can you find him among all the stuffed animals?

He gets so tired that when he finally does fall asleep, he just crashes where he is. Silly kid! I'm hoping this is just a phase. I guess I've been spoiled with Porter taking very good naps, even still!

Nap or no nap, we still love this little guy! He keeps things interesting in our family:)

One HUGE hAlloWeEn Post!

Halloween started early this year. We were basically celebrating from Oct. 1st- 31st. It was a crazy month and that is why I am just now getting around to post anything!

Elder's Quorum Halloween Party

I'm glad that we are still invited to Elder's Quorum activities even though Brandon is a High Priest. They are so much more fun than the High Priests! Last year I went to the Halloween Party alone because Brandon was sick. We decided to repeat the costumes this year so we could go together & actually make sense this year!
Here are the Black-eyed P's!

The whole group. I was so impressed with the costumes. There were some really good, really creative costumes. I wish I had some of that creativity!

Pumpkin Party
Every year the Grimmett's have a pumpkin party at their house. They have an awesome garden and always has TONS of pumpkins grow. The kiddos get to pick a pumpkin and decorate it.
I think Hudson got more paint on his hands than on his pumpkin!

Porter & Peyton getting their creative juices flowing.

This was the most hilarious thing I had seen in a long time. The game was a monster mash where they were supposed to go around the room & pop each others balloons. First of all, the balloons were too hard for the kids to pop. Second, some of the kids started getting upset that other kids were trying to pop their balloons! I don't think they quite grasped the purpose of the game, but it sure was stinkin hilarious for the mom's to watch!

Then things quieted down with lunch & a Halloween Dora movie. Thanks Maisey (and Emily) for a super fun pumpkin party!

Fantasy Trail
We took our 3rd annual trip to the Halloween Fantasy Trail outside of Oregon City. Our whole family enjoys this activity.

We brought the Grimmett's with us this year. Maisey & Porter were so brave!

Hudson was brave, too!

All the cute kids!

Our Littlest Pumpkin
This is for my mom who always is wanting to see belly pics. I'm 28 weeks here.

Monster Mash!
I did a Monster Party for Hudson's 2nd Birthday. Here are my two lil' Monsters!

*Disclaimer: The day of Hudson's party, he decided not to take a nap and was super grumpy for his party. This led to not cooperating for pictures. This is the best I got of Hudson the skunk.

Brandon made a giant monster for pin-the-nose-on-the-monster.

The kids made monster masks and I read some fun (not too scary) monster books.

And of course a monster party could not be complete without monster cupcakes,

and monster toes!

Most of the group.

Happy Birthday, Hudson!

Haunted House!
We went with some friends to the Oregon School for the Deaf to their haunted house. The cool thing about this haunted house is that Extreme Makeover Home Edition came here and made over this haunted house (along with one of the dorms). It was fun to go through the "Nightmare Factory" and then watch the episode on Halloween night. I'm amazed at what they can do on this show in one week!!! It was a super fun haunted house minus the looong wait before.

Pumpkin Carving
Porter & Hudson had a blast carving pumpkins this year.
Hudson wanted a SCARY pumpkin...

and Porter wanted a silly pumpkin...

and this was the end result: Two silly kids, one silly pumpkin, & one scary pumpkin!

Pumpkin Patch
Porter had his first preschool field trip to Bauman Farms. *For confidentiality reasons I am not posting any pictures of the rest of my preschool class (other than the occasional back of the head)
It was sooooo much fun & we will be doing this every year!

Hudson and Daddy even came along with us!

It didn't rain that day (thank goodness!) but there was no lack of mud!

The class got to see how apple cider is made...

and then had a taste, along with an apple cider donut. Yum!

Hayride to pick pumpkins.

Hudson found one just his size!

Feeding the animals.

The rest of the time we spent going through mazes, climbing through hay obstacle courses,

and sliding! Lots and lots of sliding!

And before we left, we had to stop by the nut house!

I can't tell who had more fun, Brandon or my little boys!

Carnival
On Saturday we went to our church Halloween Carnival & Trunk-or-Treat. Here's my 3 handsome boys:

Porter the Cowboy

Hudson the stinky, but cute skunk
(and yes, he had to have a horse just like his big bro!)

Brandon as... Facebook. Yes he stole the costume idea from Jim Halpert from The Office.

The Carnival was super awesome, as usual. Our ward goes all out for Halloween! It took a full 2 hours to make our way around the whole church to play all the games!

The cupcake walk was the last game we played, and as you can tell, my little guys were EXHAUSTED by this time! (and we still had the Trunk-or-Treat!)

I was pretty exhausted myself from all the game playing, so I didn't take any pictures of the Trunk-or-Treat, but I need to write down what Hudson did before I forget. Porter got a second wind for Trick-or-Treating, but Hudson really was wanting to be done. I was pretty much dragging Hudson from car to car to keep up with Porter. Hudson did not think that was cool & soon started taking out his tiredness and frustration on the people passing out the candy. When someone would try to put a piece of candy in his bag, he would start crying and yell "No!". Poor kid! I really do feel bad that he was so tired he didn't want candy!

Halloween Birthday Boy
We celebrated Halloween on Saturday & saved Sunday to celebrate Hudson's actual Birthday!

He opened presents from Mommy & Daddy.

And we had a festive Dinner-in-the-Pumpkin.