Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Thanksgiving

Prepare for a photo overload. I handed Camden off after his blessing and put Micah down for a nap, so I was able to grab the camera and take a bunch of pictures of Thanksgiving. And since I took them of  course I love them all and had to include them. 

Cooks in the kitchen. Everyone was assigned to something so it wasn't too hard being hostess. I had the easy stuff like cranberry sauce, jam and butter and turkey. Ok, so the turkey wasn't easy, but I had help with that from everyone as well so it wasn't too hard either. I think my only contribution was making the brine two nights before. Robert was the one who actually put the turkey in the brine and roasted it. (Thanks for posting the recipes Sarah! If anyone is in need of some good recipes for next Thanksgiving check out her blog, Sarah's Fares) And I must say I think the turkey turned out perfect, it was perfectly moist and flavorful.

Hannah was actually only here for Camden's blessing. They left to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Kimballs, but we must document that Hannah made an appearance.


Reah getting artsy.

 The girls were all ready to start celebrating Christmas.



 Waiting for the food to be done and snacking on some yummy rolls. And there were plenty of rolls to be had. We finished the last of them a week later I think.



 Just making sure we had a picture of Michael.  I think I got a picture of everyone..except Rob and I.

Our Give Thanks banner that survived our move from Virginia. Julia and I made it while we lived in Virginia with all the beautiful nature things right outside our doorstep- pine needles, leaves, sticks, red berries, pine cones.

I'm happy with the way everyone fit. We moved all the furniture to the sides and set up the tables in the middle of the family and living rooms. We were going to have a separate kids table so the kids could be messy and not make a mess on the carpet, but we ended up having them at the big table and they did fine. Julia and Ali shared the piano bench as their chairs.

Camden gets passed around, Reah turns to hold him.

 Micah woke up from his nap just in time for dinner (lunch actually).

We set up the toddlers in high chairs next to each other along the wall by the tables.

Camden finally got put down and promptly woke up. He only sleeps for a long time in the day if someone holds him. In fact, I am holding him right now as he sleeps to buy me some time to finally blog.

"Yeah! Check out all my food!"

You can see our Thankful Banner. Every year as a family we cut out leaf shapes on construction paper and add leaves with what we are thankful for throughout the month of November. We still had some leaves leftover on Thanksgiving so almost everyone was able to write what they were thankful for. "Family" made it up there three times even though people were trying not to repeat words.

Now onto the dinner.




"Are you going to eat that?"

 And naps afterwards.



Shenanigans

Shenanigans. That's a new favorite word around here. We use it to describe the latest trouble Micah, and sometimes Julia, are getting into.  Like to write this post I had to let Micah roam free to get it done. He decided he wanted a drink of water, so he dragged a stool over to the counter and grabbed a cup sitting there, then dragged the stool to the fridge and got himself some water from the water dispenser. He did it great the first time, then he decided to get more. While he was filling up his cup the second time he looked away and it overflowed. He was not happy to have the water get all over. I cleaned it up and dumped some of the water out of his cup.  But then he tried to get off the stool still holding the cup and spilled everything else left in his cup. Shenanigans.

This post is all the latest stuff (not necessarily trouble though) we have been up to that never got it's own post.

I filled up the bathtub for Julia, but she heard it and ran away. So while I ran after her Micah ran in and started splashing in the water with his hand, but leaned a little too far and fell in. I heard the splash and had to abandon my Julia chase to go check on Micah. He was mostly surprised. I started to take off his clothes, but then thought I should document it. Probably confused him even more.

 Camden is smiling! So adorable. He's getting to be quite the handsome little man.
 When my parents were still here we went to Newport Beach for an afternoon. Julia went home with them. When we were ready to go Camden woke up and was hungry, so we stayed a while longer while I fed him. Then we were hungry and realized there was a Cafe Rio in Newport Beach. Yay! Camden fell back asleep so it was just Robert and I and Micah having a nice little dinner at Cafe Rio. It was fun to get some one on one (two on one?) time with Micah. He is such a fun, sweet , clever little boy.

 That day was also my cousin Annette's birthday, so we had a birthday cake for her at our house. It was her first time seeing the ocean. That would be a great birthday right? Julia was super excited that it was actually someone's real birthday. She loves to pretend everyday it's someone's birthday.

 My brother Richard came out the weekend before Thanksgiving so we got to spend some time with him before everyone else came. We went to the park and hiking.

 Micah loves getting underdogs. This looks like it was all one push, but it's actually four different underdogs. He just kept asking for more.


Robert and the boys grew awesome mustaches for Movember, but they had to shave them off before the blessing. I'm such a mean Mom ;)

Julia wore her Aunt Lauren's dress from when she was a little girl. She said we should take a picture and show Lauren, so we did.


She also got her first school pictures.


 Julia helped to decorate our house for Halloween and Thanksgiving with all the crafts she made in preschool. Here she is sporting her Indian headband and bead necklace she made for Thanksgiving.

Micah loves Camden, but we need to be careful to watch him when he is around the baby or he will poke his eye or jump on top of him. Micah is learning about body parts and he loves to poke out, er, point out, people's eyes.


 Some more brotherly love.




We got a few visits from Grandpa and Grandma Wheat. They came for Thanksgiving and for Julia's primary program. Her part was "President Thomas S. Monson is the living prophet today. I love him because he teaches us good things." She delivered it flawlessly, but a bit loud. I told her she needed to say it loud because I was afraid she would whisper it, but she overcompensated because she of the microphone. Still cute though, everyone loved it. 

Camden's shenanigans has been to grow bigger.  Here he his next to Micah. It has been confusing with them wearing different size diapers but the same brand because sometimes we will go to change a diaper and grab the wrong size because they look exactly the same. Micah still had plenty of diapers in stock, so when Camden ran out I bought Camden some Costco brand diapers, but they don't come size 2, just 1-2. By the end of the box I had to squeeze him into them and he was having a blowout every time he pooped. So we decided to just put them both in size 3 diapers because they both fit in them fine.

Camden with his onsie he wore at the hospital.

Robert's shenanigans. He welded together the plumbing piece for the shower in our bathroom remodel (the one we started last November..). I'm always amazed at some of the stuff he knows how to do. Besides all the plumbing he also did the electrical work and put in the sub-floor. But since all that has taken over a year (he just doesn't have a lot of free time) we are now considering getting someone else to finish it for us.

Not Robert, but a co-worker. His company always does a big service project every year where the entire company goes out and serves (and they also do office service days too, where it's just the thousands of employees in the L.A. office doing service). They've painted schools and done beach cleanup before. It's pretty amazing considering how much money hourly each of these employees would be bringing in if they spent the day working instead, probably millions of dollars. So this year they went to inner city schools and taught financial literacy. 


Camden's Blessing

We had Camden's baby blessing on Thanksgiving morning at our home in Claremont. My family was already planning on coming to our house for Thanksgiving, so we decided it would be the easiest and the most family would be able to come to it if we just blessed Camden in conjuction with Thanksgiving. A lot of our family wouldn't even be able to make it if we had waited until Sunday, so we blessed him in our home on Thursday. The second counselor in our bishopric was able to come and Robert blessed Camden right in our living room.

The Sandbergs

I think Camden looks like baby Jesus in one of those classical paintings. Micah, not so much...

The Wheats

The Circle


Both Grandpa's were able to be there

Saturday, November 16, 2013