Happy Thanksgiving {2009}!!!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture of my Mom with Little Man E, and Baby K, on a carvanning road-trip.

Since we have Thanksgiving every year with one of our sides of the family (we switch off every year, one side Thanksgiving Day (with Mark's side this year) and one side Christmas Day (with my side this year) (for Christmas we make sure to have our own at our home too--this year we will have it early)), we felt like we were missing out on having Thanksgiving dinner with just US, our little family of 5.  We'd never even had it at our home before! Craziness I know, we've been married 7 years and never had it at our place.  I'm all about establishing our own traditions, so we decided that since we aren't willing to give up having the holidays with the extended family, that is very important to us, we will start having our thanksgiving at our home, 2 Weeks EARLY, so we can do our own thing then.  So we cooked the meal, and sat down with just us, and talked about the pilgrims (we watched Charlie Brown thanksgiving and Charlie Brown pilgrim shows afterwards), freedom, what each of us were thankful for, which included: our new home, our family, snow, (it was snowing outside at the time) our church, toys, good food to eat, etc.  It was such a lovely time, and we plan on making this a tradition in our home, since we never get sick of this kind of food, twice in one month is a special treat.

Thanksgiving at our home.  It was a great start to a wonderful tradition. :)

      Little Miss R with Olive fingers.  Don't all kids do this?  I sure did!! :)

It snowed outside while we had thanksgiving dinner at our home. :)

We built a snowman with the snow that snowed during our Thanksgiving.

Baby K has been sleeping like this a lot lately.  I think that it is so sweet.

Little Man E, had his primary program on Sunday.  It was so wonderful.  I love watching him up there.  He said his part, "Reading the scriptures helps make my family strong".  He stood up there and sang all of the songs with the primary.  I of course was down there crying (tears of joy of course!) and smiling up at Little Man E, the whole time--we made sure to sit where he could see us.  We were so proud of him!  In fact, Little Miss R, wanted to go up there so badly and do her part (next year), and she said like 5 times from the audience "Good job Brother!"  really loud.  She cracks me up. :)

Baby K, had her first experience with finger painting the other day when we had some friends over.  She thoroughly enjoyed it, and painted herself as well.

Baby K and her friend L, finger painting paper, and maybe even each other.

Little Miss R, Little Man E, and friend E, finger painting.  Little Miss R, I think, thought that you were actually supposed to paint your fingers, and painted them like nail polish.  It was a lot of fun. :)  I have the non-toxic, washable finger paint, so it is pretty harmless with the kiddos. :)