Thanksgiving!

We have the best holiday decorators in our home.  Every holiday Aleah and Cade take some time, all on their own I will add, to create decorations for the walls of our home.  This is a turkey that Cade made.  I'm always impressed by their creativity.

After helping me make the cheeseballs the night before Thanksgiving, Cade's mouth was watering and he could not wait to eat it!  They are pretty irresistible! 

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't!

 The freezing cold weather Thanksgiving morning didn't stop these cute Turkey Bowl players!

After the Turkey Bowl we were off to Grandma and Grandpa Stone's house for our Thanksgiving party and meal.

We had conversation questions.

And placemats for the children to work on while they were waiting for the feast to begin.

Many chefs makes for a happy, busy kitchen and a delicious meal!

My favorite part of Thanksgiving is thinking about all the many many blessing I have in my life. Although it was a very hard year for me, I had an abundance of blessings, tender mercies, and spiritual hugs!

The warmth, love, and happiness we felt continued as we decorated the tree, decorated the house, and prepared to celebrate the birth of our Savior!

Aleah and Cade practiced balancing the nativity box on their heads.  They are always making me laugh.  I love it!

We found out that the reason that Cade wants to set up the Christmas tree so early is so that he can play with the trains!  He is just like his Daddy, they both love trains!

Fall is Fun!

We love the sound of crunching leaves as we walk to and from school.  We love piling up leaves and jumping in them.  Aleah and Cade like to see how high they can make their pile.  Thankfully, Aunt Crystal had some leaves that we could pile up since our trees are still too little. 

Aleah made this birthday card for her Uncle Todd who is tickling her in the picture.  I love this card!

After giving him the card she sat next to him while he answered all of the questions.  She was very interested in his answers!

Aleah and Cade both painted a picture for the school's Art Walk.  They learned about an artist and then made their artwork to be similar to the artist's type of artwork.

At school Aleah and Cade both made turkeys and had a Thanksgiving party.

Cade's class had a feast.  They each brought a snack to share.

The young men and young women had a goal to make 20 Thanksgiving meal boxes to give to families in our ward who didn't have enough money for a Thanksgiving meal.  Brad took them around the ward to collect the food donations.  Then they sorted it and put it into boxes.  They ended up making over 50 meal boxes.  We were able to help other families in other wards as well and families in our own ward.  It was a really good service project.

Aleah lost her two front teeth!  Just in time for Thanksgiving and Christmas!

The first snow means it's time to set up the Christmas tree!

On November 10th it happened!  We got our first snow!  Since Aleah had to be to school by 8:00 in the morning she didn't get to play in the snow with Cade.  I prayed all day that the snow wouldn't melt before Aleah got home.

Cade had so much fun building his snowmen!

When I picked up Aleah from school she was ready to build a snowman.  She had such a great attitude!  She was all smiles and made the best out of what little snow was left for her to play in.  I'm so thankful for Aleah's attitude and that there was still some snow left!

 That night Cade said, "My rule is that once it snows that means we get to put up our Christmas tree!"  I was on bed rest at the time and so I said yes.  It gave me something to watch!

 We had two cute little late growing pumpkins that were perfect additions to our Thanksgiving decor!

We love Halloween!

Planning for Halloween is pretty much a year round activity at our house.  What we want to be for Halloween changes from time to time as the year goes on.  This year Aleah was set on her costume! She didn't waver except for one moment when we were at Costco buying Cade's costume.  She even grew out her hair so that it would be just like Astrid's (from How to Train Your Dragon)!

Cade changed his mind regularly, but once he saw the police/swat costume at Costco he was set.  He was so excited!  We bought Cade's costume and then my Mom, Dad, Grandma Bushman, Brad and I got to work on making Aleah's costume.  It was a lot of work.  My Mom did most of it, she is completely amazing!  It was a group effort that turned out incredible!  The best costume ever!

Our first party began with some pumpkin carving.  We grew our own pumpkins again this year!  We love our home grown pumpkins.

These kids totally rocked their costumes!  

I was a bat and Brad was a pirate, just in case you couldn't tell.

Grandma Bushman was sick and not able to make it to our party.  We made her some Halloween get well cards.  It was amazing to see the uniqueness and creativeness of each card!

Every Halloween party needs a doughnut eating contest!

Aleah and Cade got to do a Halloween parade at their school.  It is always fun to see all the different costumes.

They both had parties during their classes.  Cade's teacher sent me some pictures.  I wasn't able to help with their parties this time.

Aleah and Cade got to carve two pumpkins this year.

On Halloween night we had a dinner party with our neighbors in our circle.  It is a fun tradition that we look forward to every year.  We had dinner and visited.  We handed out candy and took our kids trick-or-treating.  It was such a fun night.  It was nice that it was good weather too!

The next morning Aleah and Cade organized and divided their candy.  They are so sweet to each other, always making sure that they both have equal amounts.