{Thanksgiving}

I didn't take very many pictures of Thanksgiving.  Mostly because I was really busy cooking & cleaning the entire time.  I told Adam that next year, I want to just show up somewhere and have everything done for me.  (yah, right!)  The food was delicious, and everyone was happy.  So that makes it worth it, right? 

Here are the few pictures I did take....

[the yummy Turkey & side dishes..  we had delicious desserts, but they never made it on camera!]

Ahh!  One thing that was so awesome.... The kids!  They played outside forever.  That was really nice, not to hear fighting & for them to get some fresh air!

A Morning Walk

The other day I watched a friends kids so they could go to a Church event & Adam went with them.  It was early in the morning so most of the kids were still in good moods. 

[everyone smiling before we left]

[smiles along the way]

We learned a few lessons on the way....

[Teamwork]

[and got a little exercise in]

[and one last smile before we go inside]

It's no joke when we say, the work is never done.....

Last weekend we went up to the Lake House and got the grass laid.  We figure since sooner than later we will be up there and we are tired of the "red" clay.  We hope this helps BIG time!!  In all, it probably took about 5-6 hours, and we had lots of helpers.   Our trusty friends the Sawyers were so awesome and came up with us.  Adam and Kevin did a lot of the work, but about 1/2 way through got some much needed reinforcements.  It was rainy out, which made it tough on the mommies, since the kids couldn't really go outside and burn off any energy.  We are very glad that it is done now.  Hopefully the next few trips up will be just to enjoy, instead of work!

[the fork lift that brought the pallets of sod to the backyard]

[he wasn't smiling like this when he was finished!]

 

[Getting closer]

[the kids ate lunch and watched everyone work]

[almost done for the day!]

Snow & the Lake House

Last weekend we went up to the Lake House.  Partly because we had some friends move back into town that we wanted to take up there and because they have a bunch of furniture we can use for the Lake House.  School had been canceled all last week and we were wondering what the Lake House was going to look like.  If we could even get down our driveway.  It wasn't too bad, and by the second day when I took pictures a lot of the snow had melted.   On the way back, the kids HAD to go for a ride in the big truck!

[Ice on the lake]

Pizza Dough

A few months ago we met some new friends.  They are tons of fun, and have a great recipe for Pizza Dough.  We love to make pizza at home, another set of friends got us hooked on that.  Now we have the most awesome pizza nights!  Here is Adam getting in on the fun.

New Years Eve!

Our New Years Eve did not go as planned.  We had invited a few couples up from Georgia, and for whatever reasons, they all ended up not being able to come up, or stay up.  We made the best of it, we have some really awesome neighbors on the Lake who had some family visiting them, so they all came over.  We had already spent a lot of our week with Heather & Jerrel, so it was fun to see them all.  We played games, shot off some fireworks, played some more games, rang in the New Year with some sparking apple cider and had a group photo before everyone fell asleep.  

[getting our game on]

[Heather & I, we had lots of fun nights playing games with these guys!]

[the fireworks!]

[more games!]

[our buddies Jerrel & Heather]

[someone didn't quite make it!]

[after 12:00am, we let off some roman candles]

Making Ornaments

Before Christmas we had some friends over and made some salt ornaments.  It was a first for me, both of us really.  I saw the recipe on a friends facebook status and decided it looked like fun.  The kids really loved painting them.  It entertained them for over an hour and wasn't too bad.  We put down newspaper and put aprons on the kids and let them have fun.  We got a lot of cute ornaments out of it.

We had some friends over for a Christmas gift exchange.  The hit of the night was definitely these balls.  I just know something is going to get broken in the house with these darn things.  But, the look on Tanners face when he opened his ball, makes it almost worth the impending breakage.  Thanks guys!  Sorry our gifts sucked again this year.  We really aren't that good at gift giving.. :)