Happy Thanksgiving!

We haven't had Thanksgiving with family since 2007. I was so thrilled when I heard that Jeremy's parents were coming to spend Thanksgiving with our family! This year we smoked the turkey outside on the grill. Jeremy loved it! I think this is our new method of cooking a turkey. Jeremy loved it and it freed up my oven. When I married Jeremy I learned really quickly that a relish tray is not just pickles and black olives. Richards relish tray has marinated artichoke hearts, green olives stuffed with garlic, black olives, pickles, marinated mushrooms, peppercinni's, mezzata cauliflower and carrot mix. This is one of Jeremy and my older boys favorite Thanksgiving appetizer. For dinner we had: turkey, ham, little smokies, mashed potatoes, gravy, rolls, corn, stuffing, pomegranate apple salad, corn, green beans, and cabbage salad. We also munched on a cheeseball and crackers and salami and cheese. For dessert peppermint ice-cream, pumpkin pie and my friend made us a delicious berry pie. We had enough food for an army, but now I don't need to cook for several days!

The best part of the day was being with family. The boys had lots of fun playing games, watching football and went to the movie in the evening. Chief loved whipping the cream and Bean enjoyed embroidery lessons by grandma. We are so blessed and thankful they came from Utah to visit us and we are grateful that we were able to Skype with our other family back in Utah.

 

G's Court of Honor

On Tuesday G had his Court of Honor. He earned 3 Merit Badges including fishing, fingerprinting and sculpture. Great job G! At the end they did an egg drop, which is always a hit with the boys!

Native American Feast

On Friday I took the two babies to Bean's classroom for the Native American Feast. Bean always loves when I bring the babes to class. We had a great time!

 

Toad

Our round Toad is happy, happy, happy, but also very stinky, stinky, stinky. I don't know what this little boy's deal is, but he has a major spit up problem! Every morning I bathe him in the bathroom sink and by the time I put him in a fresh diaper and outfit he has already spit up all over it. I am really hoping he outgrows this problem. It is kind of out of control! However, he is packing on the pounds so no fear there! When I ask the older to children to hold Toad they tell me they can't cause he stinks. Poor Toad. We have got to get to the bottom of his pukey problem. Bean told me that no lady is going to want to marry him, because he pukes all of the time. We laughed and I  reassured her that I am sure Toad won't have this problem later on in life. :)

Leaf Swimming

A few weeks back we had a major leaf cleanup! All the children worked for hours raking all the leaves out to the gutter. The good thing about NY is you can just rake your leaves out to the gutter and a truck comes and sucks them all up. No need to bag. Love that! Chief benefited from all his older siblings hard work. He had a ball cannonballing into the massive pile and would pretend he was swimming. After a morning of hard work we headed over to 5 Guys to get some hamburgers and fries. We love to pour lots of malt vinegar all over the fries, so good!  I of course got a grilled cheese with tomato and onion and a pickle on the side. Jeremy still laughs that I order a grilled cheese at a hamburger joint, but it is just too good to not order.Yummy! Now fast forward a few weeks, we still have lots more leaves, but it has turned cold and we are supposed to get snow this week. It may have to turn into a spring yard cleanup.