Time With Family

We are very blessed to have family close enough to celebrate the holidays. Two of Corey's brothers live about an hour and a half from us and my mom and brother live about 20-25 minutes from us. One of Corey's brothers invited everyone to their house for Thanksgiving. Everyone chips in with the cooking...and thankfully we are all very good cooks! We had a wonderful time and it was great seeing everyone again. Last year one of the boys couldn't make it but he was there this year. My brother brought along his camera & tripod so we were able to get a family picture.

Here we have everyone (l-r, b-f): Marcus, Jon, Jody, Aricka, TJ, Laurie, Patrick, Ryan, Joyce, Beverly, Matthew, Carol, Alex, Corey, Kelly, Morgan, and Michael

Here is my little family of four.

Friday we had my mom over for dinner and Corey taught us (a refresher for me) how to play Queen of Spades, a card game he grew up playing. And this weekend we've just spent lots of time together as a family relaxing, playing games, watching football,etc.

Corey has another week of vacation. So this week we will be putting up Christmas decorations and....wait for it....baking cookies!! I will also be volunteering at the Scholastic book warehouse some. Yea!

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends. It is our hope that you will take the time to reflect on the blessings in your life. We aren't teaching our children the story about the "first" Thanksgiving. We don't believe it went anywhere close to how the stories go. So while we don't celebrate it with that in mind. We do celebrate and think about all that we are thankful for in our lives. We should do this more than one day a year, don't you think?

We are blessed to have you in our lives. Thank you for being you and being a part of our life.

Edible Book Contest

Today was the Edible Book Contest held at our local library. The kids have participated the past 3 years. This year they decided to do separate entries for the first time. They each picked a book and started working on their projects Friday night. Morgan worked on her own with very little input from anyone. She had her idea and was running with it. :-) I was helping Alex put
his idea into place. We were all done and had put aside the projects for morning. I didn't take pictures because I normally do that at the library at the time of the contest. About an hour later Morgan tells us there is a problem in the kitchen and we discover that Alex's project has collapsed. There was no way of fixing it. :-( Poor kiddo was so upset! We came up with a few alternatives for him (since we didn't have enough materials to redo his original book) but he wasn't happy with any of them and just said he would not enter. We asked him to sleep on it and we would be glad to help if he picked something else.

This morning we heard Morgan talking to him as they started pulling things together to make an entry based on one of the suggestions made. He pulled it together very well! We are so proud of him. :-) There were several very good entries in their age group. Morgan placed 2nd. Alex was a little frustrated because he had to do his twice but he handled it very well. Here are their entries.

Alex's entry: Vacation Under the Volcano (Magic Tree House)

Morgan's entry: The Abominable Snowman Doesn't Roast Marshmallows (Bailey School Kids)

We are very proud of both of them for working so hard and being so creative. It isn't easy representing a book (title or story) in an edible fashion. The entries must be 95% edible materials.