November Roundup

Grace had a Thanksgiving musical program at school. It was fun to do something a little different. They did such a great job and she looked beautiful. It was short and sweet...just the way we like it!

  

The temperature dropped below 70 degrees, so of course, we need some hot chocolate!

 

James had fun dumping a whole bottle of paint on the floor in the playroom.  He has become quite adept at making messes and causing problems as of late. It is keeping me busier than I would like to be in the crisis management department! Luckily, I was able to get all the paint up with a quick dash to the store to rent a carpet cleaner. Maybe it would be a good time to get one of those for myself...I'm sure this is not the last time something like this will happen, much to my chagrin!

 

I have no picture, but we spent Thanksgiving day with the Gilyeats, a nice family in our ward that took pity on us! We had a yummy dinner with all the fixin's then went to see the new Muppet movie. It was a great, relaxing day.

And, of course, as is tradition in the Thatcher house, we decorated for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving (actually it was the day after the day after Thanksgiving because we decided to go for a hike the day after, the weather was so nice!)

 

And that finished off November!  We have so much to be thankful for.

An hour in the life...

...of a 7 and 1/2 month old!

A yummy helping of carrots and oatmeal!

She doesn't usually get this messy... she was just really gettin' into it!  And don't mind the floor littered with dinosaurs!

A bath in the sink to remove the yummy carrots!

All clean and feelin' good!

A most uncooperative photo shoot!

But darn cute anyway...James stepped in to try and assist with a transformer toy...it was unsuccessful!

Sacked out!

It's hard work being such a cute chunky monkey!

*At 7 1/2 months old, this little cutie loves eating, smiling, laughing, yelling, growling, blowing raspberries, being held, drooling and grabbing and chewing on anything and everything that gets too close!

She is not sitting up on her own or crawling yet, but she rolls like a champ and can usually get to whatever she wants.  She seems to be following Jesse's slow approach to the physical milestones...and I am OK with that!  She is still the love of our lives and the apple of our eyes!

Another tooth lost

Dylan's first lost tooth!

 

And it's the tiniest tooth you ever saw!

You belong in the Zoo!

We took advantage of the lovely, cooler weather and decided to explore the Phoenix Zoo...and these are all the pictures I have to show for it!

I have not been very good at picture taking lately...I am having trouble balancing wanting to be in the moment and trying to preserve the moment.  Plus it's just hard to be the mom of 5 kids and the photographer...it just is!

Anyway, it was a beautiful day to go to the zoo.  We enjoyed being out and exploring our new zoo.  It was an OK zoo.  We miss our ABQ zoo and gardens.  Maybe this one will be better when they are done with all the construction.  It was just really big and we felt like we did a lot of walking and not so much of seeing animals.  ABQ's zoo was smaller, but more intimate.  We were there for about 3 hours and only made it to about half of the zoo.  We did buy a yearly pass, so maybe the other half is better!  All in all, it was a fun family day.

Halloween Festivities

Pumpkin carving.  Always a kid-favorite!

 

We also went to a Fall Festival at our local park.  A fun time was had by all.

 

I even got in on the fun.  I rode a mechanical bull and did the bungee trampolines.  I've always wanted to try them both, they look so fun...well, I think they would've been more fun about 15 years ago!  It hurt my body!  The bungee harnesses left me a little bruised and battered.  This getting older thing ain't always fun!  Oh well, now I know and can be content to watch the kid have fun!

And of course, there was Halloween night and trick or treating.

 

This is the only picture I got!  In case you can't tell, Jesse is a zombie, Grace is a zombie cheerleader, Dyl is a skeleton, James picked out his own costume.  He didn't want to wear the ninja costume that we got for him and instead came out with his swim trunks and shirt, so we made him a surfer dude and Milly is a hula girl.  Costume courtesy of the talented Aunt Rose!

It was about 70 degrees out while we went trick or treating.  It was a lot of fun.  Most people just sat out in their front yards to pass out the candy.  Many houses had parties set up in their driveways complete with fire pits and such.  I like trick or treating that way!  After we canvassed our little neighborhood, we headed over to the Bishop's house and crashed their party.  

I usually don't just love Halloween, but we had a fun time this year...me included!  One thing that made a difference for me was that I told the kids that I wasn't going to stress over homemade costumes nor was I going to pay a lot of money for them, so we just headed over to the Goodwill and I let them design their own costumes with whatever they could find.  It worked out so well, I think that will be our new tradition.  

We ended up with quite the haul of candy.  I'd say it was a success!  And now onto the rest of the holiday season.  I'll need to figure out ways to make them as un-hectic as I did for Halloween!

California

Here is the rundown of our trip to California...better late than never!

The first thing we did was head for the beach.  We only got in one trip, but it was a great day at the beach (aren't they all!)  Besides family, it is the thing I miss most about CA!

 

I didn't get a picture of Dylan, he was there...It's hard to hold a baby, watch 4 other kids, try to enjoy the beach and be the photographer!

The main reason for the trip was for Grace's and her cousin, Haley's baptism.  It was so much fun to be surrounded by lots of family and friends for this special day.  My mom and Larry and my dad even flew in for the weekend.

 

 Again, I wish I had gotten more pictures, but it is difficult keeping up with everything!  Haley's Grandma Cheryal gave the talk on baptism and my mom gave the talk on the Holy Ghost then all the cousins sang "When I am Baptized" while my nephew played the guitar.  It was so special and so personal.  I think the girls really enjoyed their baptism.

The rest of the time was spent mostly hanging out with family.  We did get to go to a pumpkin festival with Danny's family that was loads of fun.

 

It's always a fun time spent with family.  I wish we all lived closer!