The Feast

What a gorgeous feast! And if it looks this pretty imagine how good it tasted! Here was our menu!!

Turkey (of course!), Stuffing, my special garlic mashed potatoes =), gravy, green beans, rolls (way to go Rach!), Christmas Cranberry Salad. And for dessert we made 6 pies!! 2 cherry, 2 humongous apple pies, one positively perfect pumpkin pie and one special caramel pecan pumpkin pie. I sampled all of them....more than once and was thouroughly impressed! I ate way too much and was really thankful for my happy tummy!

Here is our spread! Grandma McKneely made these table runners especially for the event and the glasses were new--weren't they the nice touch?

Here are Sam and KP sitting down to eat their portions of the feast.

We had a crew celebrating this holiday with us. The McKneely original 7--Joey came in from Zurich, Andy's family (add 3), Stephen's family (add 4), My parents (add 2) had an empty nest and so they drove up that morning to eat with us, then went on to visit my sister in Austin. Our friend Ilya (add 1) from Russia was also celebrating with us. He's working in the states right now and came to be with us. So for those of you who are counting....that's 17 wonderful people to be thankful for!!

We have to get DRESSED UP?!?!?

At the McKneely home, Thanksgiving preparations begin about 1 1/2 days before the feast. Nothing is storebought, everything is made from scratch and I look forward to the home made pies, rolls, and a special family tradition of Christmas Cranberry Salad!!

We'll talk about the feast in another post, but something I really appreciate about the meal is that it's something special, an event. Therefore dressing up is standard, there are cloth tablecloths and cloth napkins, the fine china and serving dishes saved for special occasions get put to good use. It used to be that Sunday dinner was such an event in this country and that tradition has fallen by the wayside. So it gets resurrected in the McKneely home and it's a tradition that we continue in our home (Sorry Aaron!).

So all that being said, someone should have given my kids the memo!! It probably wasn't a great idea to give them a snack at 10:30 and expect them to wait until 3:00 to eat again, but that's just how it went down, so blood sugar was low and it was nap time, and...you get the picture. But when we attempted to get Sam dressed into his church clothes just to eat, he blew a fuse! He was so mad and sad and just a mess!! Go figure, he wanted to continue to wear his prized yellow soccer ball shirt and short pants that he'd been wearing all morning.

Here he is right after getting dressed. I was trying to get our family together to take the opportunity to shoot our Christmas photo since we're all dressed up and have plenty of hands to snap a photo. What a joke! Sam just would not calm down. This was about the best we could do....needless to say we'll be having another photo shoot soon!

He continued to cry all through the impromptu photo session as well as through the dinner. He was so hungry but tired too and after eating some, we took this tired, cranky boy up to bed and I enjoyed a more peaceful feast!

A funny moment through all this was his inability to calm down, Stephen threatened that if he couldn't pull himself together, we'd just send him to bed--it was getting pretty ridiculous! So through his wailing and tears was his exclamation, "I'm gonna beeeee ha-peeeee!" ( sniff sniff), it made many smile, and me as well now that it's not in the moment.

Making Turkeys

My kids are way into crafting and usually are all over an activity. This Thanksgiving holiday we spent almost a full week with Stephen's parents in College Station. On Monday Grandma McKneely wanted to make a goodie for her seminary class and we found these adorable edible turkey's online and dove into the project of making about 12 of them.

Kaitlyn was especially helpful counting out the right number of candy corn candies (7, 6 for the feathers and one broken off for the beak), a whopper (the head), a reeses peanut butter cup slightly sliced (the body), and the 2 oreo cookies each one required. And let's be honest, she suffered through the task of eating any rejects. It was her favorite part!!

Here they are working on their project.

And here are Sam & KP enjoying the spoils!! Happy Turkeys!!

I'm still here

I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, I promise! November was a busy month for our family, all 3 of the kids and mom were sick at least once and so that's my excuse, but we're going to catch us up.

Lindsey took her first steps this month and now is toddling along quite efficiently. Her new thing is to pick something up to carry it while walking--geesh! It's not enough just to walk!! So that's an exciting piece of news. So she's mobile and my life just got busier! She's also into cabinets and the pantry constantly. She also has mastered climbing up stairs--thank goodness we don't have any!!

Lindsey Turns one!

Honestly I didn't think I would be this together, this at peace, this happy when Lindsey turned one. Back when we were suprised with my pregnancy with her I was PETRIFIED of what life would be like with 3 so little, so close in age. But I have SURVIVED--and what's better, I've THRIVED! Heavenly Father loves me so much, he knew exactly what I could handle and what would force me to seek his hand in ALL things. So here's to being blessed and for letting the MASTER PLANNER bless me with an amazingly sweet and snuggly and precious little spirit. I am SO very glad she's here!!

Have you ever been sick on your birthday? This little one was, on her VERY FIRST ONE! Poor little guy had raging fevers off and on all day the day before and now the day after they're still raging a bit. She was pretty miserable. Good thing we had lots of willing hands and arms to hold her.

Here she is with Aunt Ray-ray. She wasn't able to be here the night before for all the festivities so we appropriately got our kids back in their costumes to show them off. How fun!! (PS: Kaitlyn was talking in every shot, so this was the best one--she can be quite the motormouth!!)We had a casual family lunch and cake celebration. My parents and Stephen's sister Rachel came to celebrate with us. I remember Kaitlyns 1st birthday and what a fiasco I tried to make it, this was so much better, so much more relaxed and fun. Frankly I'm quite proud that my 3rd even got a 1st party. But hey it's a celebration for me and her right? Here is the obligatory eating birthday cake shot. So sweet!!

Happy Birthday Lindsey!!

Happy Halloween

Here is our wonderful crew on Halloween night. What a hoot! We were excited! Kaitlyn had been counting down the days and laid out her costume appropriately about 4 days early and gave strict instructions not to let anyone touch any aspect of it. Sheesh!

Lindsey thankfully fit into this old costume that Sam wore on his first Halloween. She was so snuggly and adorable. Too bad she'd woke up that morning with a fever and had a rather yucky day. Thank goodness her fevers cleared up for a bit in the evening to go trick or treating with the family.

For WEEKS Sam was telling everyone he was going to be "Just like Bob for Christmas". Man did that get some puzzling looks. But here he is, "just like Bob", for Halloween! He was a PERFECT Bob the builder, he even looks like him with round head and face! His shirt was this perfect 2nd hand clothing store find for $4! I totally scored!!

And finally our Kaitlyn, who was a PINK princess last year, informed me that she wanted to again be a princess, but not a pink one, a PURPLE one. She loved the crown, the wand, and of course, wearing make-up!

Okay, and can we just talk about the HAUL our kids made?!?! We just went one little loop around our immediate neighborhood. Lots of people had just left out bowls on their doorsteps and we were good only to take one piece, unless of course they had signs begging us to take "at least 3" (good grief--what are they--a dentist?). But even with many homes not even giving out candy, this is what our community family candy bowl looks like now:

And because we're mean parents our children have a limit of ONE piece of candy a day. We figure this bowl will last us until at least 5 years or something ridiculous like that.

Owens Farm-Pumpkin Patch

I LOVE family outings! I think I'm wierd but I love exposing my children to new experiences and expanding their point of view. This coupled with my love for creating family traditions and memories makes me quite the sucker for an annual excursion to the Pumpkin Patch.

Convieniently Kaitlyn's preschool class was planning an outing and so we tagged along. (We were going to go last week as a family but Linz and Sambo were sick with fevers and the weather wasn't great). I was also so glad that Stephen, who has accrued so much extra PTO, was able to take the morning off to spend with us.

First we were a little overwhelmed when we arrived at the farm. Kaitlyn's school class is all of 12 kids and 2 teachers. Throw 3 more parents into the mix (minus our family) that was our group. Imagine our reaction when arriving at the farm there were like 8 LARGE school buses full of elementary school kids. There were HUNDREDS of parents and kids at the farm. We thought this whole outing would be a disaster for the crowds but it really wasn't a big deal. We all stayed together, there were lots of different things to do (feeding the animals, looking at horses, pigs, donkeys, cows, etc.)

The first thing we did was go on a hay ride. Sam couldn't get up onto the trailer fast enough, he was so excited!! He has a silly face in this photo--he's such a funny kid!! Kaitlyn, who normally would have been totally overwhelmed by this whole thing was for the most part uninhibited I think because we've gone here a handful of times already so she really could enjoy herself. Here she is with one of her best friends from school, Molly.

We've gone to a pumpkin patch EVERY year as a family, this year is Lindsey's first pumpkin patch experience because her birthday is the day after Halloween. Here she is with Dad. She has a pacifier in her mouth in nearly every photo because this whole activity was during her normal nap time and while she wasn't fussy and did perfectly fine, the pacifier helped I think!

Sam really wanted to see a horse. It was his only request all morning as we got ready to go, we saw a few miniature horses feeding along with some geese and ducks while on the hay ride. Sam was all over the fact a REALLY BIG TRACTOR was pulling the trailer. As soon as we got off the hay ride, he wanted to climb onto the other trailer and go again!

Then Kaitlyn's class sat down for a snack. Kaitlyn and Molly are silly snackers!! They got to the farm before us so they'd already seen all the animals in the pens but Sam hadn't so Dad took him around to see all the horses eating and pigs sleeping.

When snack time was over and we'd let the kids run around and we'd taken a photo op with the kids and thier teachers:

It was time to search for our pumpkins. Lindsey didn't get to choose one but she took good care of Sammy's cute pumpkin. Don't you think?

We had such a fun time! The weather was crisp and cool, the sun shone brightly, everyone was happy and had a good time. I love successful family outings! Tomorrow night we'll carve the pumpkins (Dad has mutual and bishopric tonight). I can't wait until next year, Happy Pumpkining Everybody!!

Here are some other great shots:

And finally a family shot. I had hoped for one worthy of our Christmas card but no dice, ah well there's always next time!!!