A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family
For the past few weeks that we’ve known cousins were coming to Utah for a visit, Dinah has been talking lots and lots about Annaleah, and how she can’t wait to see her. Jenny said that Annaleah has been anticipating coming to visit ‘her friend Dinah’. So cute they’ve been wanting to see each other SO BADLY! And now they are together and just being so cute. 🙂
Black Friday I don’t go out shopping. I’m quite happy to just stay home and do nothing! However today was the only day that we had everyone together so we could have pictures taken (actually we were all together yesterday, but I don’t think the mall was open). So Kyle had made an appointment for us at JC Penny’s portrait studio for this afternoon. We got there just a few minutes late, which considering we had to get 7 kids ready in the car and then drive to Provo, wasn’t too bad. But we sat there waiting, and waiting and waiting for the studio to be ready. When they finally were ready Kyle and Dinah were gone because Dinah had to go potty. So when they got back we finally went in. We started with pictures of just the 7 kids all dressed up cute in Christmas colors, the ‘photographer’ got them all placed and started playing with them to get them to smile then stepped back to take a picture, and didn’t. She did this a few times, either because a kid moved or for who knows what reason. Then when she seemed to be finally ready and she tried to take the first picture, she looked down and discovered that the cameras battery was dead! I don’t know why she didn’t check all that before even getting us back there, we were waiting long enough. So she switched the battery taking the new one from the charger and plugging the old one in it’s place… Then she gets going again, playing with the kids then she goes to click the button to take a picture and the camera’s cord had fallen out and it was no longer plugged into the computer! ARGH! Ok we STILL had not gotten any pictures, but it was a simple fix she plugged it in and started again. When she stood back to take the picture this time she noticed that she still had not logged in to the computer and set up our session, so she had to stop everything and do that. I was so annoyed. The kids were getting restless and we still hadn’t even gotten ONE picture! Also in trying to get the kids to smile and look at her she used Elmo as a prop, and she kept saying ‘Say Elmo!’ and our kids were looking at her like, “Who’s Elmo?” (No my kids do not watch Sesame Street and no they do not know what Sesame Street is. We don’t have TV channels, never have, we just whatever movies Kyle and I happen to buy.) But Kyle had introduced our kids to the “Avatar: The Last Air Bender” cartoon this past week (he found the episodes online somewhere), and so the kids were all talking about air benders and water benders and the Avatar and all that, so she eventually caught on and started telling them to say “Avatar” instead of “Elmo”. She probably thought we are totally weird.
So finally everything is set up. She has changed the battery in the camera, the camera IS plugged into the computer and the computer is all set up with our session so the pictures can be stored under our name THERE! Let’s do this! We got a few pictures of the one pose then we changed the backdrop and got a few more pictures in another pose. Then we switched gears and Kyle and I changed our kids quickly into our M&M shirts and blue jeans (actually we just put their blue jeans on on top of their pants/tights to make changing go faster). Then we took a couple of shots of our family. I think by then we were up to 17 pictures, and we were in there thinking our limit was 30 (that’s the way it has always been when we went in), but then the ladies told us that it’s actually been reduced to 20! Ok dang it that meant that we were almost full, and Jenny still wanted pictures of just her two kids in their fall outfits. So they had to delete a few of our previous pictures to make room. So we finish with taking pictures, and Jenny, Tom and Tiffany took the kids to put our name in at Red Robin so we could go have dinner, since it was there in the mall.
Kyle and I stayed to view our pictures on their computer and order the cd. The price has gone up! It’s now $150! I don’t remember exactly what it was before but it certainly wasn’t $150, I kind of think it was only $99 last time we were in. So the price has gone up considerably AND the number of pictures they are allowed to take has gone down!!!! I’m so unhappy. I mean if you’re going to charge more at least keep the total pictures allowed the same. Or if you’re going to lower the total pictures at least keep the price the same! Sigh. I don’t think we’ll be using Penny’s for pictures any more, which means I need to find another photographer.
Today we changed our Thanksgiving tree into a Christmas tree! This is the first year that we are using our bigger newer Christmas tree, and since it is bigger and came with multicolored lights already on it, that meant a shopping trip to go get new decorations to put on it (our other tree has silver and gold decorations). So Wednesday when I was out shopping with my sisters I picked up some new garland, and some beads, a tree skirt and a new star. 🙂 The kids had lots of fun decorating the tree with their cousins, and some of them got quite mad when there weren’t any ornaments left to hang.
Our finished tree:
Finished AND with all the presents underneath, and Santa quietly watching 😉
That Santa was something that when I was very young my mom painted. She felt like when she was done she had painted his face to look like me. So when I got married and started my own family I inherited it. 🙂
This year since Jenny and her family were in town, Thanksgiving was at our house. 🙂 I spent the morning making the last of 4 pies (made the other 3 last night), and making up the stuffing to stuff the 22 lb turkey and get it in the oven. Once the turkey was in the oven Kyle and I made up the veggie platter (carrot sticks, celery sticks, radishes, snap peas, red olives, mini dill pickles and ranch dip) and the other munchy platter (beef sausage log chunks, cheese cubes, wheat thin and triscut crackers, and a cheese ball). We also had cranberry pumpkin bread ready for an appetizer. Then I got to relax until about 2 in the afternoon, at which time I had to get up and start the bread machine on making rolls. Kyle made the mashed potatoes and the turkey was ready WAY earlier than anticipated. According to my cookbook, since the turkey was 22 lbs, and stuffed it was probably 23 lbs which meant that the turkey was supposed to be done some time between 4 and 4:30. It was WAY done at 3! I put the meat thermometer into the breast and the temperature shot right up to 180 degrees (which according to the chart on the thermometer sleeve, that is DONE for poultry).
Dad sent up See’s chocolate turkeys and the kids got to eat those after the turkey was in the oven and the excitement of getting dinner under way, was over.
Karen, Laurel & her family came over about 4:00, so I carved the turkey and we got everything set up to eat. The menu consisted of the turkey, apple rice stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes. Karen made a salad, and brought a couple of cans of cranberry sauce and olives. Laurel brought mashed yams, corn bread muffins, and broccoli. We also had my home canned plums, spiced peaches, and spiced apple rings and we had rolls so we could also have some of my home canned jams. 🙂 For drink we had a sherbet mixed with lemon lime soda, punch which was very yummy. The first batch we used pineapple sherbet, and the second batch we used mango sherbet. Debby and Jeff came over late since she had to work today and they just came out after she got off work. There was still plenty of food left though so they got to have their fill.
After dinner was over, we just hung out for a bit. And we had a bit of an incident. Jenny was playing with Dinah. Jenny had tucked one of Dinah’s kitty stuffed animals in her shirt and was crawling around on the floor pretending to look for it. Dinah knew where it was and was trying to get in front of her to pull it out of her shirt. At some point Dinah tripped over something and fell, but her face hit the bucket that we use to store the kids train toys. I have no idea what the bucket was doing in the living room instead of being in the boys room where it belongs, but when her face hit the bucket it snapped the rim off and that created a sharp edge which left Dinah with a bit of a scraped cheek and a long cut over her eye. 🙁
I got up to clean up the kitchen a bit and put away most of the leftover food. Then it was time to get out the pies. I made a blackberry pie, a peach pie, an eggnog pie, and a pumpkin streusel pie, and Laurel brought a sweet potato pie.
After pie we hung out a bit more. Laurel told some jokes. Then we called it a night. All in all it was a good thanksgiving, and I’m very grateful that I was on top of things enough that I wasn’t on my feet ALL day, that was very nice. I’m glad that everyone could come and that everyone seemed to enjoy the food.
Jenny, her family and Tiffany were planning on driving up on Monday to visit, but they had to postpone and drive up Tuesday instead. Tuesday there were warnings everywhere about a huge arctic blizzard that was headed our way and should hit about 6pm Tuesday evening and work it’s way down through the entire state of Utah. So I called Jenny to warn her about it, and told them to drive carefully and keep me posted on where they are, and that I would tell them when the storm hit my area. Kyle emailed his second job about working from home Tuesday night so there would be no chance of him getting stuck somewhere in the storm. (February 13 2008, there was a really bad storm and Kyle hadn’t left work early so it took him EIGHT HOURS to drive home that night, normally it’s just a 45-60 minute drive.) They told him that he couldn’t work from home for security reasons, but that they would allow him to have the night off without any negative attendance penalties kicking in. YAY! So I only had to worry about Jenny and her family being on the road.
Once they got into Utah they started texting us to let us know where they were, and what the weather conditions on the road were and they kept asking what the weather was like where we are. I would look out the window and I never saw any snow falling. It was really windy, and that made it really cold, but I didn’t see the snow on the lawn getting higher and the only snow I saw flying around in the sky was the stuff that was blowing off our roofs, definitely not a blizzard amount of snow. The next morning there still wasn’t much new snow on the ground, so I don’t know why the media made such a HUGE deal about this massive storm that was heading our way. At least Kyle got the night off out of it. 🙂
Most of that snow was there before the ‘storm’. The kids really had a fun time playing in it though.
Today Debby came over too, to visit with everybody. We hung out for awhile then Jenny, Debby, Tiffany and I went to do some minor shopping. Jenny needed to pick up a few things, and I needed to go get some new decoration for our new tree. So we left Tom with the 7 kids and we took off for a bit. We were only gone for a couple of hours then we came back to the house and I got some dinner on the table. Then Tom and Jeff left to go on a bit of a trip to Wyoming. And us girls just hung out with the kids for awhile before getting them into bed. Jenny took lots of cute pictures of the kids since they were so happy to be with their cousins and have everybody else here too.
Dinah found Debby’s big fuzzy boots and was clomping around the house in them for a bit.
Aw, so cute! Like I said they were SO happy to be able to spend some time together. I love Debby’s crazy over excited smile in the background too. 🙂
All seven of my parent’s grandchildren.
After Dinah tired of playing with Debby’s boots she found Jenny’s sunglasses and decided to wear those for awhile. She’s just so cute. 🙂
Then we put the kids to bed and I went to work making pies!