Thanksgiving 2006

The feast
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and weekend. We went up to my mom' s house for Thanksgiving. She lives in a beautiful log house up in the mountains near the Canadian border. It was the perfect setting. Lots of snow, pine trees, mountains and starry nights. In my family we have a tradition of eating our Thanksgiving dinner at night by candlelight. We all usually gather in the afternoon and munch on appetizers while we finish up all the cooking. Then we usually eat around 6pm. I love this tradition because it lets us enjoy the whole day and all the festivities aren't over by 2pm. My mom is a gourmet cook and my sisters and I all aspire to be...so the food was amazing.

We had a smaller group this year. Stacey, John and Dane weren't there. Stacey was hosting Thanksgiving at her house for her in-laws. We also usually have other in-laws, friends, and relatives at dinner but not this year. It was really cozy and fun this year.

Sisters...Sisters...nothing could be better than sisters...we miss you Stac

Kirk and Jordi decided to leg wrestle...another family tradition

Everyone spent the night at my mom's. We ate ourselves SICK...literally. We put the kids to bed and then all the adults stayed up and played games until 4 am. I'd like to report that Tyler and I are still UNDEFEATED at Cranium!! We had a blast! Then on Friday...Black Friday...my mom, Kelley, and I hit a few stores but the pickings are very slim in her small town but we did find a few treasures. That night my mom took the kids to her little town square to see Santa. We watched movies and ate our favorite Parmesan popcorn. And after the kids went to bed it was a "Footloose Marathon"...this is a family fave...filmed where we grew up and we have several old friends and neighbors who are extras...quite prominent extras I might add...that are fun to see.

On Saturday Thanksgiving tradition number two occurred. We had another HUGE Thanksgiving Dinner but this time out at the Lake. My grandma always hosts her thanksgiving dinner on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This goes back to the 60's when a lot of the family were shift workers and usually had to work on Thanksgiving and so moving the holiday to Saturday worked out well. We haven't really had to do this for quite a few years but Thanksgiving at Grandma's remains on Saturday. I have my suspicions about the "real" reason it was moved...I think it was an ingenious plan on my grandma's part to always have her kids there for Thanksgiving...let them eat at their in-laws on the actual day and then spend the weekend at the lake.

Another small group...we are missing about 30 of us

Aunt Bonnie and Uncle Mike

Cousins


Justin and Hannah

This year we ate good food...My grandma makes the best pies in the WORLD! She is quite famous for it! We had a great time visiting, catching up, and playing games. Unfortunately there wasn't enough snow to go sledding...the lake wasn't frozen over to ice skate and have our family hockey game...and no one was crazy enough this year to take the polar bear plunge...all family traditions.

After dinner at Grandma's we went back up to my mom's and spent the night and came home late Sunday night in the middle of a huge blizzard! We had a wonderful holiday with lots of family fun and lots of gratitude for all our many blessings!!

Sisters Creed

We have had another busy weekend. They fly by so fast! On Friday night Kirk was at our house and entertaining us with his "Kirk vs. wildlife" stories. Kirk is a surveyor and spends most of his time out in the forest. He has many humorous tales to tell. This last week he was nearly rammed by a big horn sheep. Kirk and Tyler also had me laughing hysterically as they were having a contest to see who had the most defined and cut leg muscles. This is a common occurrence...ever since Kirk hit puberty and started growing he has been comparing himself to Tyler. It was a glorious day for Kirk when he was taller than Tyler. (Tyler came on the scene in our family when Kirk was 10...he is now 24). Ok...I feel old which wasn't the point of this blog. Anyway...they still constantly compare height even though I'm PRETTY SURE both of them have stopped growing. At least once a year they have a wrestling match where Kirk tries to take the "old man" down. I don't think he has succeeded yet. These matches leave both of them bruised and beaten up. I suggested that they start comparing receding hair lines and bald spots but that didn't go over well. So Friday night it was leg muscles...I was the judge as I have a long and notorious history of dating cyclists/mountain bikers...all the way to back to my first boyfriend Rex Nielson...but I digress. You should have seen these two with their pant legs pulled up...calf muscles flexing. Then the calves weren't enough. The cut of the thigh muscles had to be compared. At this point they both dropped their pants and were flexing yet again. This was a humorous site...Tyler in his garments and Kirk in his boxers...arguing about who had the most defined leg muscles. How I wish I had taken a picture. And women are accused of being vain...hum? During this debate the door bell rang. It was my mom. Neither guy even bothered to pull up his pants and just stood there grinning at my mom. She was unfazed and didn't even acknowledge their underwear state...such is my family.

We also met Paul and Whitney for lunch. It was so nice to catch up with them. Paul has an opportunity to be a chef at the biggest resort in our area...he was wined and dined this weekend by the resort. Exciting!

I have also been busy this weekend finishing up projects. My mom and sisters, Stacey, Kelley, and I have a business. It is called Sisters Creed. It's kind of hard to describe but we sell things at different venues like antiques sales/crafts sales etc. We have done two sales so far...Farm Chicks and a sale in the Palouse area. We are doing a Christmas sale in the Palouse area on December 2nd so we have been busy getting things finished. Most of our stuff is repurposed items that we refurbish, repaint and revamp. My mom is a true artisan and does a lot of fantastic things with vintage fabrics etc. We call our business Sisters Creed because our creed is that we breathe new life into old objects while celebrating our own unique styles. We all love antiques and vintage things and we love decorating with them in our homes. This business gives us a "legitimate" reason for spending money and collecting cool stuff. The hard part now is parting with these items when we sell them.

Sisters Creed at Farm Chicks

I have to admit though that we are our own best customers. Case in point the leopard chair that I bought from my mom and my fabulous white 50's nagahide sofa that Kelley purchased from me. We have done well at our sales and it has been a blast doing this together. We love to go thriftstore shopping and to garage sales hunting vintage treasures. We are junkers extraordinaire. Our husbands have had to get used to dragging home items left on the street as trash that we think are amazing and hauling our stuff from show to show. Even Reilly is a little junker in the making ...she can spot great stuff from a mile away!




We have a website that Tyler is setting up for us...www.sisterscreed.com and a mailing list. This weekend I have been busy updating our addresses and getting postcards ready to send out for this sale. Our dream is to one day have a big sale of our own like Farm Chicks but with our own particular spin on it.

Booth pictures from Farm Chicks

Reilly and Kameron's Birthday Bash

Birthday Party

Mom, Ailey, Grandma, Kameron, Tyler and Reilly

The Exhausted Parents

Stacey, Reilly and Kameron

The Birthday Boy and Girl

Super-Kameron in his inflatable suit with help from Uncle Kirk

Kirk and Ty

Happy 6th Birthday Kameron!!

Kameron...6 months old

The Birthday Boy!

Ok...So February is apparantly quite a HOT month around our house!!! Looking at all the baby pictures of Kameron and Reilly has been so much fun! I just want to eat Kameron up...with his little bald head and chubby cheeks!! I can't believe he is six!! He's out of the T's (2T, 3t etc.)...he's an XS! The past few days the kids have been asking me to tell the stories of the days they were born. Reilly's birth was stressful and slightly dramatic (hum...just like her) and Kameron's was as mellow as can be...just like him.

Kameron was born at around 4:30 am in Provo, Utah. My mom was the head hospital administrator there and they had just finished their new womens hospital addition and so I was treated like ROYALTY! I had the biggest room with a fantastic view of Provo. We had the blinds open and could see the lights of the city. All my siblings and my mom were in the room with us. The lights were low and Kamers was born. It was so calm and peaceful. It was a great birth!

Yesterday Kameron wanted to do something "special"...there wasn't school that day...Reilly was at Ballet Daycamp all day (one of her birthday gifts)...and it was just me, Kameron and Ailey. The "special" thing that he wanted to do was to go to McDonalds and eat and play in their little playland. Lucy...I truly admire you for all the times you take your boys there. What a good mom! I , on the other hand, LOATHE AND DESPISE McDonalds and try to go there as little as possible! So I relented... as his birthday was the next day and all he wanted was a happy meal. Now McDonalds can be a trying place for vegetarian kids (but they are getting better). My kids eat fish and love fish filets...but I have a real chip on my shoulder about McDonalds. They are absolute jerks about substituting a fish filet for the hamburger/chicken nuggets. The whole McDonald's corporation will apparently fall apart if someone puts a freaking fish filet in the happy meal box. I have begged them to charge me more...whatever they have to do. I just want the flippen box and toy. After years of frustration the only solution is to buy a fish filet meal deal and a happy meal...I hand over the fish sandwich...and I, in turn, have to gag down the cheeseburger...usually this task falls to Tyler who happily chows down the three burgers. Gross!

Now the day I picked to go was the WRONG day. The place was packed with mothers and kids galore. There were a lot of big kids there that were pushing and being kind of rough so Kameron decided he didn't want to play on the equipment. It took Ailey actually dragging him over to the equipment to get him to play and then he had a great time. Ailey, on the other hand, wasn't fazed a bit by the kids and crowds etc. But that is Kameron...he is like the calm between two wild hurricanes (his sisters).

Here are a few of the many things I love about Kameron:

-He is very easy-going.

-He has a crazy giggle.

-He likes to wink...especially at his aunts and his mom.

-He has an unusual and obsessive love for macaroni and cheese...this deserves some detail.

( He has mac and cheese on the brain pretty much all day. For example, in preschool last

year they were working on the five senses and they made a cute little book...these were

Kameron's answers: favorite taste: mac and cheese, favorite smell: mac and cheese, favorite

sight: seeing my mom making mac and cheese, favorite sounds: the sound of the water

boiling for mac and cheese!! This has earned him the nickname, Kamerony and Cheese, from

his Aunt Kelley).

-He has an facial expression that looks just like George W. Bush...it's uncanny and VERY disturbing for my many democratic relatives.

-He greats me every morning with "Heellllooo my sweet mommy!!"

-He hip-hop dances!! This has me and Tyler on the floor laughing yet still trying to look like we aren't laughing!

-He likes to wear his old "The Thing" costume outside when he takes the dog out and will flex for all the cars going by.

-He is a Star Wars/Superhero fanatic.

-He will still cuddle...sometimes.

-His curly hair and twinkley green eyes.

-He can charm me like no one else.

-He is the spitting image of his daddy!!

-He has the smelliest feet known to man...he has cleared a room of grown men and teenage boys by only taking off one baby sandal...(He was 18 months old!) :)

Happy Birthday Kamers!! Kama-lama-ding-dong, Kamerony and cheese, Kameronious!! I love you!

Happy 10th Birthday Reilly!!

The Birthday Girl!

The two of us...now

The two of us...then

Today is Reilly's 10th birthday...I can't believe how fast 10 years have gone by. Wow!

Today Reilly and Kameron had dental appointments, it was late start day, and there was a Veteran's Day Assembly so I asked Reilly if she just wanted to take the day off from school. She wasn't too enthusiastic about it...I would've LOVED it if my mom took me out of school on my birthday (but my birthday is in the summer so that wouldn't have ever happened). The clincher was when I told her that her friend Caitlyn's birthday was the same day and they would both be bringing treats to school today...BUT...if she waited until Monday (tomorrow they don't have school due to Veteran's day) she would have all the birthday glory. (This makes my life a tad bit easier because Kameron's birthday is on Saturday and he will also be bringing birthday treats on Monday...so why not do them all on the same day.) That convinced her...little diva that she is.

We had fun hanging out today. We picked Tyler up from work on his lunch hour and went out to lunch and then bummed around for awhile. Reilly is a great kid! She is a lot of fun to spend time with and, lucky for me, most of the things she likes to do are the same things I like to do. We like the same restaurants and stores etc so it makes it nice. One thing that she REALLY wanted to do now that she is a "preteen" (see maturation blog ;) ) was watch an episode of "Days of Our Lives". Ok...I'll admit it...I watch "Days of Our Lives"...I have since about 5th grade. If you grew up in Utah you know that "Days" always came on after school and so it could be watched year round. My mom DESPISES soap operas and would forbid us from watching but that only made them more appealing...the forbidden fruit...and we would watch regardless and would keep an eye out for any parent coming home early. Anyway...Reilly wanted to watch...and against my better judgement I let her...BIG MISTAKE...I believe she saw about five minutes. It's one thing to watch by yourself when little ones are napping and it's another thing to watch it with your ten year old...with her eyes bugging out of her head and mouth agape...no more soaps for her until she's in college! So much for granting birthday wishes!!

There are many things I love about Reilly such as her sense of humor, her wackiness, her sense of style, her love of family, her generosity, the many talents that she shares, her willingness be "mommy #2" when needed, her love of arguing with me about EVERYTHING, her ability to make me laugh when I am REALLY mad, her ability to raise one eyebrow, the fact that she actually thinks I'm cool (those days are numbered!!), her gutsiness, her joie de vivre, her sassy mouth, her independence, her love of pedicures, her hugs, her "fainting spells", her ability to laugh at herself, her incoherent talk and crazy wild-eyed behavior if you wake her up at night, the fact that she will "fake" being asleep in the car so that Tyler will carry her into the house and as she's being carried in she will flash me a "thumbs up" sign, her protectiveness of Ailey and Kameron, her competitiveness, her love of all things gospel-related and too many others to name!!

Happy Birthday Rye-Rye!!

Sunday Dinner

Stacey, Kirk, Kristin, Jordin and Kelley...rare pic of just the five of us

This a belated blog...I have been sick all weekend and have done absolutely nothing so I will blog about last Sunday. Sunday dinner has been a long standing tradition in our family. When Tyler and I got engaged my family moved from Texas to Utah. My mom started up our family's sunday dinner tradition. We would all go up to my mom's house for dinner every Sunday afternoon. She would cook a fantastic gourmet meal and all of us no longer living at home would come and spend the evening...often bringing boyfriends, fiances, friends, and dirty laundry with us. This was a great opportunity for all of us to catch up on the week and spend time with Kirk and Jordi who were still living at home. We would usually go for walks or play games etc. after we were done eating. My mom would cook an enormous meal so that all of us poor college students and newlyweds would have leftovers to take home (she still does that... Yay!).

There are five of us...four girls and one boy. Kirk likes to refer to himself as the "alpha male"...My mom used to say when we were growing up that she wanted us all to be independent/free-thinking people who weren't afraid to voice their opinions. Now that we are all grown I think she may be regretting those words! Dinners with our family are LOUD!! We have a joke in our family that we haven't had dinner until someone has cried! Usually from laughter!

Poor Tyler...when he joined our crazy family he used to just eat quietly and not say a word...we used to always tell him that he needed to join right in...well those days are long gone! He LOUDLY voices his opinions right along with the rest of us...and I even believe he's been told to "shut-up" a few times too! Did I mention that my family is sarcastic and loves to tease?? :)

When we moved to our town...far from Utah...we missed those Sunday dinners so much! But luckily for us my family has all followed us up here. My mom moved up here about a year after we did. My sister, Stacey, her husband John, and their little boy, Dane, moved to a small town about an hour away from our town a year ago. My sister, Kelley, moved here almost two years ago. My sister, Jordin, moved here about six months ago...and the final hold-out...Kirk...moved here in September.

Time to eat

After everyone moved close my sisters and I decided that we needed to start Sunday dinners again. Now that we have families of our own and even busier schedules we try to have them at least once a month. Last Sunday it was at our house. The only people who were not there were my mom and Mike who were in Canada, and John who was in Utah. My mom did call to see how things were going and she sounded a bit sad that she wasn't there!!

As usual we had a GREAT time and ate some AMAZING food!! I love my family and am so grateful that we are close in proximity and as a family. They are truly amazing people who I love spending time with...Long live Sunday Dinners!!

Cousins: Kameron, Ailey, Reilly and Dane