Thanksgiving dinner take a lot of time and patience

I just love Thanksgiving. There is no other day when food is the main attraction. This year we stayed and had it with Eli's family at his Aunt Melissa's house. There is nothing greater than 8 people all trying to climb over each other is the kitchen to make dinner. We all had food assignments and were given a time to have dinner the rest was up to us. Eli and I were in charge of the rolls (rhodes), the gravy (from a jar, can't quite get it right on my own yet), and the cranberry sauce (this one I actually made from scratch). It was fun trying to accomidate everyone it the kitchen and I say this with honesty. There is nothing better than being with family and the end result is worht it.

Desert anyone?

Eli's favorite desert for Thanksgiving is a Boston Cream Pie. Well as my luck would have it, NOBODY makes them anymore. I couldn't buy one to save my life. When I was complaining to my mom about this she said, you know if it's your husband's favorite you should just learn to make it. So this year I decided to try. Did you know that Boston Cream Pie isn't a pie but really a cake? All the recipies online seemed easy enough but when Iwould read the comments people would just say how hard it was and that they had tried multiple times and never could get it to work. I was getting a little discouraged, then I found a comment that said the hard part is getting the cake to rise and she just uses a yellow cake mix. So we tried it and with a little trouble with the ganoche (just a little thick due to too much heat) it turned out pretty good. It tasted amazing, Eli has already requested one for his birhday.

Don't you just love the lights at the Temple?

Did you ever wonder how they get there? Maybe you don't care or you never really thought about it before. Well I am here to tell you that it is a lot of hard work. 2 years ago Eli and I thought it would be a good service opportunity to help put the lights on the LA temple grounds. It was a good service project, but it was a lot of work. Our Stake is assigned a couple of Olive trees on the East side of the Temple. A couple of trees you say, shouldn't take that long. It is when the director of the project keeps having you take strands down and change them. Last time it took us 4 hours to get 75% of the way done with the help of our friends the Covingtons. So when the sign up sheet went around last year there was no way I was about to do it again.

This year when the sign up sheet went around RS I felt like I should explain it as it really is not as this amazing fun thing that you can go do, and that is a lot of hard work. But when the sign up sheet went around I thought what could it hurt because this year I knew what I was getting into besides I thought that Eli would get a kick out of the protesters for Prop 8. However much to my surprise it was a lot more fun. The director was a really nice man who came over and was just having a good time with us. We took Eli's brother Luke who is taller than Eli so I think that that helped. We finished with our trees in about 2 hours. We did have some help from other members of our Stake but we got 2 trees done this time.

So if the opportunity presents itself again next year I think we might take it.
Ps. there were no protesters, it was kind of disapointing

Sharing sharing everybody sharing

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As we have started to give Hayley solids we thought it would be fun for her to share a treat with her daddy. So the other day Eli shared a Popsicle with her. She LOVED IT! She couldn't keep her hands off of it, we finally had to hold them down. This girl is defiantly a girl after my own heart.
I love the melted blue Popsicle on her chin. This is something we will defiantly do again.

Clean up, clean up

A few years ago Aubree got this toy vacuum. She has played with it on and off but now anytime I vacuum she needs to vacuum. On the back of the toy it has a switch that turns on and off the voice that talks when you push it. When I turn on my vacuum she turns the switch on, when I turn my vacuum off she turns hers off. If I use my hose she uses hers. When we were finished I put my vacuum in the closet Aubree insisted hers go in there as well. Aubree finds new ways to make me smile every single day.

Introducing the one the only.....

Necia, Ok so not the one and only. This is one of Aubree's favorite little people. I am not sure what her "real" name was but Aubree re-named her Necia after my sister. She started to call her this all on her own. When Aubree can't find her she calls out, "Necia, where are you". This makes me miss my Necia everytime.

15 minutes a day

They say it will really help your child in development if you read out loud to them for at least 15 minutes a day. Eli has really taken this to heart ever since Aubree was about 6 months old. As part of the bedtime routine he takes Aubree and has now started to take Hayley upstairs for book time. We have most of our kids books upstairs but have a handful downstairs. These books downstairs never get to be apart of the bedtime routine and so consequently are read less, for this reason the other night Eli asked Aubree if we could read downstairs so we could read the books down stairs. Aubree decided that would be ok, but instead of Eli reading to her she would read to him. So cute.
She was very determined to read it to him the way he reads to her, with the pictures out. I was really impressed by how much of the book she actually could read ( well had memorized, lets not kid ourselves ) and the rest she just made up. She always is able to make us smile.