It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

I thought it was so cute when they pulled out the nativity ornament.  They called it the "very special ornament" and wanted to put it on the tree together.

Little Miss Sass!!

Ta-Da!!!! The finished product!!!

 

We began our tradition of reading Christmas stories by the Christmas tree every night before bed. 

Thanksgiving in Spokane

 

We all gathered at Jared's house in Spokane this year for Thanksgiving.  The kids were in heaven having so many little people to play with.  Megan was especially excited to meet her brand new little cousin, baby Annalea and couldn't get enough of her.  Activities included: horseback riding, crafts, a talent show and family hoedown, games, a hike and lots of fun and good times.  Sadly, the last day was a much different story as 20 out of the 27 of us came down with a bad case of the stomach flu.  Somehow, Megan was one of the lucky 7 and escaped it.  It was totally crazy as one by one we dropped like flies...let's just say that it's a very good thing that Jared's house had 5 bathrooms because they were definitely needed.  Somehow I managed to drive our family home going on no sleep from the night before, having been up all night throwing up.  Andrew was curled up in the passenger seat looking miserable, and Jordan, who we thought had miraculously escaped it, started throwing up halfway home.  It felt so good to be home and let's just say...this is a Thanksgiving I'm sure none of us will EVER forget.  Here are some pictures of our fun adventures...before the plague hit us.....

 

Soccer

Jordan played his first sport this fall and tried his hand...or I should say, foot...at soccer.  He loved it and it was a lot of fun watching him play and cheer his team on.  At the beginning of the season he would just kind of run around wildly doing ninja moves and didn't really care much about kicking the ball, but by the end of the season he was getting the hang of it.  He had a blast playing and that was all that really mattered.  Now we're onto the next adventure....basketball!!!!

 

School Pictures

Megan's First Talk

Megan gave her first talk in primary today.  Her topic was how she can be a missionary through her example.  She had a lot of fun helping me prepare the pictures and we practiced all week to get ready so she could do it all by herself.  We recorded her giving her talk to us so she could get in some good practice. When it came time to actually stand up and give it in front of all the primary kids she got a little bit nervous and was quietly chuckling in the microphone.  I just had to help her out a little at the very beginning and off she went.  Here's our sweet Megan teaching us how she can be a "missiomary." 

 

 

Halloween Fun

On the Monday before Halloween we had a family Halloween party for family night.  We carved pumpkins, decorated pumpkin cookies and ate a pumpkin-shaped pizza for dinner.

Megan's always pulling the funniest faces.

 

Finshed products...trying to match the faces on their pumpkins.

 

All ready to go hit the neighborhood....a beautiful princess with her brave ninja protector.

Andrew and some friends made a Dr. Frankenstein's lab in a garage to scare all the trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood.  It was a lot of work and Andrew spent some late nights working on this, but they had a lot of fun and scared a lot of people....even some adults got freaked out.