FORTS!

Lily has decided that the best place for a fort is her bed. So every night she builds her fort with as many blankets as she can find.

Lily hiding in the fort

Cali hiding in the fort

The girls posing in front of their fort (lily's idea for the pose)

Setting up the Christmas Tree

We finally got our tree up and decorated. Yes, we've opted for a fake tree! I was against it at first, but after having it last year I have to admit it is so much easier. No mess on the floor, no watering the tree all the time, and no tree dying the week before Christmas! I'm sure when the kids are a little older and the nostalga of picking out our Christmas Tree means something to them, we'll do it, but for now, this works perfect!

Calista and the Smelly Markers

Look really close, can you see the blue marker on Calista's nose?

Okay, maybe not. But the story is worth telling. Calista came home from school last Thursday with blue marker all on her nose. When we got home I asked her why she felt the urge to color on her nose at school and she says 'I didn't color on my nose at school'. So I asked how all that blue marker just magically appeared on her nose. She informed me 'oh that's smelly marker. Kids aren't allowed to use them.' I further inquired as to how it got on her nose, and she said 'when I got my paper back I rubbed my nose on the paper as hard as I could to smell the marker, Katie got it all over her face worse!'

The First Snow Fall of The Season!

It finally snowed! November 30th! This is our house as we were leaving for gospel meeting.... by nightfall it turned to rain and nothing was left on the ground by morning. We are supposed to get snow this weekend, so we'll hope that stays around!

Thanksgiving Up to Camp

The Thanksgiving that almost wasn't!

Sally put the turkey in a counter top oven early in the morning so that the oven would be available for side dishes. At 10 am Jobe went to make toast and the toaster wouldn't work and we realized we had blown a fuse! The turkey was stone cold! We quick threw the turkey in the oven and thankfully it had enough time to cook and dinner was served at 1PM instead of the planned 12:30 PM.

All the girls in the tub getting ready for Thanksgiving! Natalie is missing, next year she'll be big enough!

Molly and Shilo

The kids table

The adult table

Natalie all dressed up

Cali, Lily, and Shelby

Lily and Shelby had meeting in Carl and Sally's bed. They were signing hymn #1 and using Sally's romance novels as their meeting books!

After Thanksgiving Carl got a great fire going outside and we all went out to enjoy the beautiful night.

Gretty ended the night by reading the kids P is for Pilgrim... and alphabet Thanksgiving story.

After Thanksgiving a bunch of the family came up to stay at the camp on the hill. On Friday night everyone came down to play some games and try to get rid of some of the left over pies!

The ladies started the night off with an intense game of Jenga! We reached 27 rows and 2 blocks before our tower toppled!

The guys thought they could 'out build' the ladies Jenga tower. Too bad! They only got 26 rows!

Then they all headed downstairs for a game of Foosball

The kids and Jobe enjoying a game of Backgammon

Lily enjoying a book in front of the sunny window

Shilo was NOT okay with Daddy holding Molly, so poor Daddy, he got to hold both the babies!

Sorry this post is so late (and so long!) We had a great time and took a lot of photos! Many of these are Sally's as my camera has been on the fritz so thanks Sally for the use of your photos! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Side Notes

The week of Thanksgiving was somewhat of a comedy of errors for our family. The Thanksgiving turkey ordeal just added to our list:

While Duane was changing Shilo (in front of the window on the changing table) Shilo decided to flail her arms.... punching one of the panes of glass right out of the window and sent it flying to the ground. When it reached its destination it shattered into a million pieces. Thankfully none of the kids (or adults) were under the window when it happened. Boy was it scary!

Before we left for camp Calista and Lily were playing in the bathroom and when Lily went to run away from Calista she ran right into the knee wall outside the bathroom... with her face! She got an awful black eye which is still going away two weeks later. I took this picture the morning of the 28th, just before heading up to the hill to go sledding with everyone....



Lily took one run down the hill and was going so fast towards the trees she tried to turn and ended up bailing out instead! ON HER FACE! There wasn't a lot of snow and what was there was mostly ice. The ground and her face was pretty bloody by the time I got to the bottom of the hill. Poor Lily, she looked like she went a couple rounds with Mike Tyson! We nursed her back to health though with lots of hugs (thanks Jody and Jill!) and lots of lotion!