Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has been a happily adopted holiday for me. What's not to like really? I mean I always loved Christmas dinner and Thanksgiving is basically the same. I love that Ryan gets a couple of days off work to spend time some extra time with us and then, of course, it's a nice opportunity to think about the things we are grateful for.
We headed down to Salem to be with Ryan's family for the day and greatly enjoyed the yummy feast of really good food, followed by games and conversation. Ryan and the boys stayed the night down there, while I headed home. I had plans with my friends to go out shopping on Black Friday. It was so hard to get up at 3:30am when it was the first time in a while I had gotten a really good uninterrupted (by Pete) sleep. But it was worth while. I got all of my Christmas shopping done for Jack and Pete and just had a blast hanging out with the girls.

Pete has started sitting up really good now by himself and also had his first taste of rice cereal which he wasn't a big fan of at first.

Not impressed with the rice cereal at all!


Jack has discovered a new love: making art! It makes me proud. He still loves playing with his beloved cars, but for now he is spending a great deal of his day drawing, colouring, and painting.


The boys have been getting along so much better lately. Well, let me rephrase that. Jack has been getting along much better with his brother lately ( although on second glance at this picture here it looks like Jack is ready to take a punch at Pete..Haha). They roll around on the floor together and Pete is highly entertained by pretty much everything Jack does. I love having two boys. It makes me so happy to see them interacting and I can't wait till Pete is old enough to really play with Jack.

We went with some friends on Saturday and cut down our own Christmas tree. It was really fun and I hope that it will become a new family tradition...at least while we are living in Oregon. I mean seriously you can't live here and not get a nice real tree, ours is lovely and it was only $10! I am really looking forward to spending our first Christmas in our new home this year.

I'm Jack the Pumpkin King

I love the movie "The Nightmare Before Christmas"; it's a favourite of mine. I watch it at Halloween and Christmas. So, Jack and I sat down to watch it last week. He was utterly terrified. During the opening song he clung to my arm for dear life. Bless. Well, then he decided that he wanted to try and watch it again later in the week. He was still a little scared, but not nearly as much as he had been. He liked that the main character shared his name and walked around yelling "I'm Jack" while watching it.

This Halloween was the best Halloween I have EVER had. We had about a hundred or so trick or treaters come by our house. The streets were lined with kids. It was like I had always imagined Halloween should be. Like in E.T.
I took Jack out for about 20 mins just around our neighbourhood. Of course the house that was decked out (see pics below..that don't even do it justice!) was completely packed with people. They had added even more decorations and had the theme music from the movie "Halloween" blaring. It was insane. Jack started crying the second we got close to it.
When we got back Ryan and I traded roles and he took Jack back out and I stayed with Pete to answer the door. At one house the family were all sitting outside watching "Monsters Inc" that they had projected onto their garage door. They had extra chairs out for people to sit down and join them. It was fab.

The next day when we got back from Stake Conference at noon, every single decoration on that 'crazy house' had been taken down already! I couldn't believe it. Now I can't wait to see what they do next year.