Gingerbread house competition

The first weekend in Dec I found there was a gingerbread decorating competition. It looked like a lot of fun so when we got up and around we headed downtown. To get in you just had to bring a canned food item or a hygiene item for donation. 

When we looked at the details there were 3 groups, the professional, amateur, and kid group. Since we had gotten there later in the morning many were still working on them but you could see what it was they were making. The kids really had a lot of fun looking at all the different things people were making. 

The amateur group had the most entry's and I was pretty impressed on some of the ones I seen. Olivia loved all the Frozen ones a few people had made. 

Of course the professional ones had a lot of detail and really thought outside the box. 

These two pictures are of the professional ones. At each table there was a container that you could "vote" for your favorite. Since this was all for charity all the money collected was donated. The one with most money won their category. 

We gave all the kids a dollar so they could vote for their favorite on. Thomas and Sup both voted for the Star Wars one. Eric and I liked the pirate ships, which I found out later won the professional group. 

It was a really fun morning and inspired the boys into wanting to try their hand at making a gingerbread house. After we finished up at the gingerbread houses we headed over to Aizzpizza. This is a new pizza place that has opened up here. I had heard good things about it from some of the girls at work so we decided to give it a try. It is best described to me as like subway but it pizza instead of sandwiches. We were all able to have our own pizza the way we wanted and it was fresh and hot.   

sushi night

This year Eric and I wanted to have a fun night while we still had family down. We thought we would have more of an "interactive" dinner. Eric and I thought it would be fun to have a sushi night and since we didn't really have a lot of the stuff to make it his sister was willing to share her things with us. 

We had gone to the store before Thanksgiving and picked out all the stuff we thought would be good to stuff in the sushi rolls. It was fun to see what every one picked and I think we were able to have a pretty good selection of all types of sushi rolls. 

Even though our boys were not as excited to eat the rolls they did try the ones they made. I think for the most part we all had a fun time with it. We did have crepes earlier on in the week that we did dessert sushi rolls as well : )

Thanksgiving 2016

Thanksgiving is always such a fun time for our family. For the past several years Eric's sister and her family come down and spend the long weekend with us. We have a little bit of a system worked out that we really don't have to plan too much at this point ; )

 I always like to try new things and recipes and it so nice when others are willing to try : ) On Thanksgiving we always have appetizers and then our big turkey dinner late afternoonish. Since all our kids are getting older we all tried to help with something for the meal and/or the appetizers. 

I think it is safe to say all the kids had fun helping with the food. Everything went off without any issues and we had a fun and very yummy meal. It is fun to see all our kids have fun and grow from year to year and have some fun traditions and memories to share with each other. We are grateful that we are able to spend this holiday together!

I am thankful for...

What is nice about the location of my job it is not too far to get to the school the boys attend. For Thanksgiving, Thomas's teacher invited all the parents to attend a reading by the kids who wrote what they were thankful for. 

I was able to take my lunch break and head up to the school to see Thomas. At first he wasn't going to read it paper, but I gave him a little bit of a guilt trip and he changed his mind and read it for me ; ) He was one of the last ones because he was not going to originally read it. After hearing some of the other kids I who were thankful for their family, God, food, and all the things you would hope to hear I was hoping Thomas would be along those lines as well…. He was not. He was thankful for his Xbox, Halo and Legos…. It seems I still have some work to do ; )