Thanksgiving Break

For Thanksgiving Break we headed up to Las Vegas to be with Nathan's parents.  Actually the whole family was there!  Brooke's family wasn't able to come because Mark had to work...we missed them!  But it was definitely a full house.  Nathan's mom has been begging him to help her build two triple bunk beds in the play room for times like this.  We went back and forth about doing it before the break but it just never happened.  In the end we decided to build them and we all pitched in and pulled together and got one of them built the day before Thanksgiving!  The other one Nathan and his dad finished up on Friday.  I have to brag about my husband.  He practically designed and made up the plans on his own (with a little help from anawhite.com and her double bunk bed plan...we adapted ours from that).   And they turned out so great!  We didn't have time to stain them yet because people were dying to sleep in them!  That'll have to happen later.  Despite the chaos, full house, screaming children, and dozens of trips to Lowe's and Target, it was a pretty successful venture, overall.  :) 

Discussing the plans.  I'm not gonna lie, I helped for the first couple hours and then left
the building to the boys and went out with the girls to buy bedding!

Justin and I were in charge of putting together the head and foot boards.  And don't
let this picture deceive you...Justin did all the work

Sawyer and Taryn testing out the beds and the new bedding...this is one of the rare moments
these two weren't at eachother's necks!

They turned out so great and the kids love them!

We had an ugly sweater party on our last night to kick off the Christmas season...Andrea came well
equipped with lots of fun 'minute to win it' games for everyone to play!  It was a blast.

We also had a white elephant gift exchange...we learned last year to make sure and get
all good gifts for the kids on this one.  You can never go wrong with candy...

My little family forgot to pack our ugly sweaters.  But we managed to find something decent
in the house...haha

The week before driving to Vegas, Erin came to visit all of us AZ folks.  We went to True Foods Kitchen
for Andrea's birthday...

Little Red Riding Hood and the Gang

We managed to figure out a costume theme for the family this year.  I don't think we need a lot of explanation, but just for fun--Nathan was the hunter, I was the grandma, Violet was Red Riding Hood, and Sawyer was the BIG BAD WOLF (imagine this said very loudly in a 2 yr old voice whilst growling).  I was getting a little worried when he was still trying to tell me the morning of that he was going to be the grandma and I could be the big bad wolf.  But in the end he was happy to be the wolf.  We went trick-or-treating like 3 times total (Midwestern school event, trunk or treat at the church, and a neighborhood up the road with Kristie and her family). Sawyer loved it every time.  We are new to the whole 'getting mounds of candy in one night for our 2 yr old' thing...so we pretty much just let him eat it all in like 2 days (minus the chocolate which we promptly set aside for ourselves once he was in bed).  Nathan decided (as the dentist in the family) that it was better to ruin his teeth for 2 days and be done than for him to have a little every day.  I was ok with that because once it was gone I didn't have to deal with the constant struggle to find it/whine for it every day.  But anyways, we had a great Halloween this year!  Even Violet seemed to enjoy all the tromping around.