Thanksgiving at Grammy's

We went to Grammy Jo's house for Thanksgiving this year, and had a great time. The kids had their own table, which Lexi and Megan and Ashley Noto also had to sit at.

We used the pomoegranite plates and had some delicious fried turkey and ham. (though the ham was not fried.) Apparently a large percentage of people (I'm thinking it was 80%) photograph their Thanksgiving feast, and we were not among them. Afterwards, the girls took the kids outside to play on scooters and bikes. Lexi and Sareny had to pose, of course.

Cute cousins! Fin and Chuckles look so cute together.

And I love this one too.

They had lots of fun.

The boys.

Lexi and Ashley. Megan was the photographer, so she isn't in any of the pictures.

While we were there, Sareny asked Grammy Jo if she could do lite-brite.

She had fun desiging her own picture.

Soon the other kids caught wind of a fun project, and gathered around for their turn.

The kids also had lots of fun playing Lincoln Logs.

Charlie threw a fit over something, I think it may have had to do with Finley. Maybe because it wasn't my own kid throwing the fit, I thought it was pretty cute.

It was pretty dramatic.

Friday evening, Bampa set up an outside movie on a big screen and we watched Elf. We bundled up as much as we could, but I was still freezing! Very strangely, my mom was apparently not cold. The next morning, we did gingerbread houses before Jake and Liz headed back up to Utah. Everybody had some pretty cute and creative little houses.

The Keel family with their creations. I especially liked Liz and Josh's ladder with Santa on it.

The rest of us, sans me the photographer.

The kids with the houses.

At some point on Saturday, I looked in the front room and saw all three kids clambering and playing on their Bampa. Pretty typical. I was glad I got this candid shot before everyone looked up at me. 

He even puts up with Isaac pinching his nose and will still smile for the camera.

Saturday evening we helped Grammy Jo get her Christmas tree decorated. Finley clustered a lot of hers in this spot with the ladder.

Lexi hanging up her favorites.

The little ladder was pretty handy.

Finley gets pretty excited about Christmas ornaments and liked this Canadian Mounty.

And this is the only picture I got of Isaac hanging ornaments, because lets face it, he loses interest in non-electronics pretty quickly and moves on.

And to conclude our holiday festivities, me, Lexi, and my mom went to a late show. Yes, we saw Breaking Dawn in the Pioneer Theater in downtown Overton. And they were both quite embarrassed that I asked a random stranger to take our picture. But hey, things like this have to be documented.

I realized about halfway through the movie based on the giggles and comments from Lexi and my mom and that none of us are die hard Twilight fans. I wanted to go because I like going to movies and will see most anything, but afterwards I was like, "so why did we go see that if none of us are even remotely into Twilight?" Apparently, my sis-in-law Liz is, and she was the one who had come up with the idea of the girls seeing it, but we weren't able to squeeze it in before she left. So instead, the non-fans went. Interesting. All in all, we had a great time at Grammy and Bampa's.

Gingerbread houses

We like to make little gingerbread houses every year at Christmas time, and this year we were able to invite some new friends over for the event. Sareny's best friend is a little girl named Lisa from her class, and luckily, Lisa's family lives a few streets away from us. That's pretty fortunate when you consider that it takes me about 20 minutes to drive to her school. This year, Daddy helped Isaac make a house, and I helped Sareny. Finley wasn't too concerned that she wasn't making a house, she just wanted to eat much candy as she possibly could.

All of the kids together with their finished projects.
Lisa, Mia, and Brianna.

Isaac, Princess Finney, and Sareny.

We had a great time with Lisa's family and are so glad that Sareny has made such a great friend at school.

Dream Mansion

Keith and I decided to make a mansion gingerbread house this year. It is a bakery/chocolate shop, which we of course named Enticing Icing. We love taking on projects like this, even though it entails many hours of baking, assembling, decorating, and detail work.

This house has a cute little window display that shows off the bakery's goods--a wedding cake, a chocolate torte cake, donuts, a chocolate cake, and three gingerbread houses. It was pretty fun making such tiny confections.

The house also features a lot of scrollwork done in royal icing, including a fence that Keith designed.

I made the Christmas trees by stacking waffle cones and covering them with icing leaves.

This sign for the shop is molded out of chocolate.

There are even two working lights inside.

We put the gingerbread house up on our entertainment center in the hopes of it making it through the holidays intact. Who knows, maybe it will last through several Christmases.

A Happy Thanksgiving!

We had such a great Thanksgiving this year! Grammy Jo, Bampa, and Lexi came for the weekend and our friends Jay, Shauntel, Caleb and Claire came for dinner. The table looked great and the food was all really delicious.

Everyone pitched in to get the food on the table, whether it was mashing potatoes or entertaining the kids, who happen to love their Bampa.

I have decided that Lexi must have more clothing than any other human being on the planet, because she refuses to use laundromats and just saves up her clothes until she visits home to do any laundry. Well, to be fair, she did say she did one load of darks in the month between visits. Anyway, what this means is that she had to bring all of her laundry to my house to do.

Here is Sareny modeling one article of Lexi's clothing, which prompted probably the funniest thing that happened all weekend. Isaac pointed at it and said, "Ucky's Boobies." Apparently ucky is how he says Lexi. It was just darn hilarious!

Sareny absolutely loves her tia Lexi. I think Lex is the only one who will straighten Sareny's hair, and she was so excited. I kind of feel like I already have a teenager, since Sareny always wants to have her hair straightened and has even asked if we could dye her hair brown.

Lexi picked up these adorable little leggings for me from someone who sells them in Utah. It is actually my friend Debra Gardner's sister-in-law, and because I'm cheap, I opted to have Lex pick them up for me instead of paying for shipping. I think they are so darn cute!

The rest of the weekend was pretty crazy. For the first time ever, we decided to participate in Black Friday to see what all the fuss was about. Me, my mom, and Lexi started the day off at 4:30 am in Walmart, while my dad covered Lowe's and Big 5 (Keith had to miss out on the fun by sleeping in with the kids.) I felt like I was on Shop 'til You Drop--I seriously just ran from stack to stack, dumping stuff in the shopping cart as I ran by. We got several good movies for just $2 each, as well as various other cool deals. We went to Target next, but they seemed to be pretty cleaned out already, so we just basically got a few movies before heading off to Jo-Anne Fabric. I dropped Grammy Jo and Lexi off and went back home to unload all of our purchases, feed Finley, and pickup Keith, Sareny, Isaac and Finley for a trip to the mall. We went to Sear's, where Keith got some dress shirt and tie combos for $15 and I got some Hallmark ornaments for regular price. Sad. The shopping spree ended with lunch at Mimi's where the whole group reunited.

One of our favorite Thanksgiving traditions is decorating gingerbread houses. This is something Keith's family always did when he was a kid, and something we started doing together when we were just dating. Now gingerbread houses have also become a Keel family tradition and something our own kids are starting to look forward to. We always have a huge assortment of candies to choose from and everyone gets creative and has a lot of fun. Our company had to leave this afternoon so Bampa could get back home in time for church tomorrow, since he is the Bishop of their ward right now. Before they left, we squeezed in one last trip to the mall, but I'll have to post about that later since this is already so long!