Turkey Fruit Plate

So yesterday Corey took the kids swimming again and I stayed in the room to make turkey heads for a little holiday treat I had planned. 

I got some of the ideas for how to do this via pinterest, but this was my own creation!

We had them for a lunch snack while they waited for our turkey feast to finish cooking.  

Items needed:

• red icing
• candy corn
• mini oreos
• Nutter Butter cookies
• chocolate chips
• graham crackers
• pretzel sticks
• regular pretzels
• white frosting
• fruits of choice (we used raspberries, blue berries, red grapes, green grapes, and bananas)

I made the heads and then let the kids do the rest and personalize their plates. Here's how I made the heads:

Get a nutter butter cookie - put a glob of red icing on it, stick the candy corn in that and let it dry

To help the candy corns not slide off the icing, I just propped them up on each other or a spoon handle. They dried quickly. Then I put on the mini oreo eyes by breaking off a small piece of graham cracker to hold up the front eye.

Put a bit of icing on that as glue

then break a mini oreo in half until you find two good halves and put the far eye down first, and then the front eye:

Then put a chocolate chip on each cookie for the pupil and viola~ Turkey heads!

I had one example for the kids to see, so they could know where we were going with this.We made the turkey bodies with graham crackers, just cut off the corners to make it kinda rounded. Put a little frosting on a piece of cracker behind the head to keep it level.

Frosting as the glue behind the pretzels made good turkey legs and feet.

This turkey was our demo and then served to Corey and his little friends Natalie and Sophi.

So after showing the crew the how to of this holiday treat, I put the fruit, pretzels, and frosting on the table and let the kids go to town.

Wesley was the first one finished. Good job buddy!

Next was Melodie

Joseph said his turkey was out in a snowstorm, hence his excuse for slathering it in white frosting.

His brothers thought it was brilliant and followed suit. Actually Ethan said his turkey had a white bear, it was a wise Gandalf turkey.

Hyrum's turkey:

Lily's turkey:

Abi's turkey - her turkey was running away, didn't want to be eaten!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving Day

For Thanksgiving this year, Corey thought it would be fun to go away somewhere, so he booked time for us in Bear Lake for two days. It was a fun get away. We came up last night and had our Thanksgiving feast up here today.

...but the feast had to wait until after we first tortured the children with a little historical drive. We drove up the west side of Bear Lake up to Idaho and stopped in PARIS!

The kids are excited to tell their friends "Yeah, we went to Paris over Thanksgiving..." Ha ha, so clever. The town's sign appeared to be smeared with blood... nice. Kids were grossed out. Ambrose and his parents, Thomas and Ann, lived in Paris during the late 1800s (pretty sure).

I'm going to have to do some research about that now. I had to stop and check out the list of graves at the Paris Cemetery. No Hibberts. But it would be fun to find out who were the families and people buried there that Thomas and his family knew.

And apparently the first Oregon Trail came through the Bear Lake valley - it was an important Fur Trade center. Neat!

So, after me inflicting great suffering upon my children, by making them sit in a comfortable and heated vehicle while I stopped at 4 road side historical markers, we decided the kids had endured enough and we headed back to the hotel for dinner. I had wanted to stay home and have our holiday dinner there, but I'm glad Corey arranged this retreat for us and didn't let me talk him into cancelling it. With 11 of us in our family, we have to get two rooms (max occupancy is 10). It was good - we had one room that was kids' territory (the messy room and where we ate most of the time) and then Corey and I (and Natalie) were able to go into our room for peaceful, quiet, and clean surroundings. 

For our Thanksgiving Dinner we put both of the tables into our clean room and were able to set up our surprise dinner in there.

The kids saw me cooking, cause I did that in their messy side, but they didn't know we'd set up a banquet hall in our room.

It was a cute surprise for them.

Mel had helped me make the little fall tree center pieces and name tags -

I had to pack fall colored papers, markers, and hot glue and we were good to go craft.

We also made a little turkey treat for lunch:

I'll post more about that tomorrow. And after dinner I put Natalie to bed while they went back to the messy room for a game of Compatibility.

That's a funny game to play with these up and coming teenagers, they get pretty goofy.

Family Scripture Time

On Sunday we started reading the Book of Mormon together as a family. Usually for scripture time I just read and share something and try to help the kids can see how it applies to their life. After reading Nienie's post about how they just finished reading the Book of Mormon together as a family, I thought it would be a great family goal for us in 2015. Then I thought it would be fun to give ourselves a head start on the year, so we started Sunday. First I had to collect enough books for us for everyone to follow along...

I had been grabbing Book of Mormon books every time I go thrift shopping (free at DI) so now I've got 11 paper back copies in one room, and 11 hard back copies in the front room, which is where we tend to do most of our family reading. So, yeah! Should be fun!

Last night and this morning I made bookmarks for everyone.

And after a few days and a few hundred times of telling each person where we were on the page when we were starting again, I decided and hope that a post it note will help each person. A book mark to mark the page, post it to mark the verse. They can put the post it on their book mark while we read and then put it on the verse that we finish on.

We might cut out pictures from old church magazines to decorate the bookmarks with or something. I love these little stamper markers. Mine are by Cra-Z art, but I can't see them online anywhere. I bought them a few years ago. Similar to these. I'm a bit stamp happy. A place for everything and everything in its place!

We are headed up to Bear Lake to night for the holiday weekend. :)

Update: Kids had fun swimming tonight. Sophia enjoyed the 2 ft. deep kiddie pool.

Corey got attacked , which usually happens when he goes swimming with the kids. I came over to do a quick photo documentation then headed back to the room with Natalie.

We Love Natalie

I know I probably post more pictures of Natalie than anyone else in our family.... but it's just that she's so stinkin' cute. And I'm not the only one that is crazy about her, all the kids are. So here are Natalie's top cute moments from yesterday:

She folded her arms for prayer before dinner (yes I was peeking to try and capture the moment)

And then I had everyone pretend they were praying again so I could try to get another shot.

Isn't that just so cute how she holds her elbows!! Love those chubby arms. And then during the opening and closing credits of Studio C last night, Natalie started doing her little jig dance and so we turned the tv up really loud and joined in:

She was squealing and giggling and laughing so hard, it makes us all laugh too. So we just watched the new episode, but had to watch the beginning of the rerun that comes right after, just so we could all sing and dance with Natalie again.

We got in our FHE lesson before Studio C, which usually doesn't happen. It helped that Hyrum didn't have band cause of the Thanksgiving Holiday. Nice to have a short break. Plus these short daylight hours helps us get the dinner and night time routine going like around 5 (well, when I've got my act together). :)

Kids Town Is Back!

Well, it has returned! For it's third year in a row, we have Kids Town back in business in our basement, just like every year in November after the first snowfall. Here are the Kids Towns of 2012, 2013

Here's Lily's costume shop. I loved her mannequins! ...and I thought the viking hat was super cute with the purple dress.

Wesley, of course, has an art shop.

 Ethan, of course, is Mayor. Hyrum is the mayor assistant.

The town marquee announcing the great event.

City Hall:

This year they made a daycare, and Sophi loves it. She sat in that little house reading and loving having her own space.

 Ethan ran up to get me, cause I HAD to get a picture of Sophi "she is being so cute!"

Fun stuff. The kids were in the basement all weekend. It was so quiet upstairs, anyone who was upstairs kept asking "Where is everybody?" Why, they're in Kids Town of course!!

They're also recruiting all the neighbor kids to come over and open an establishment. We might run out of tables, but they are having lots of fun, we'll see how long it lasts this year!