Thanksgiving-pocalypse

Here's a few pictures before our Johnson Family Thanksgiving... I should give a warning that there are some yucky details involved...this is my journal after all :)

I had to document the fact that Carter feels very possessive of the shoe bin. Luckily this phase only lasted a week or so, but at least once a day Carter would empty out the entire bin, climb in, and just sit. He would yell if you tried to put anything in with him, or take him out, until he was ready. Then he would calmly climb out, put a few shoes back in, and carry about his day.

I still regret not buying this hat. We were just on a family Target trip, and Carter tried this adorable hat on. He totally pulled it off, and was just beyond cute with all the faces he was making. What a funny kid!

I just realized I only have Carter pictures this time. He is the kid that is willing to smile for the camera right now. Right before Thanksgiving I decided to chop all my hair off. I was just sick of the messy bun every day, and knew that short hair forces me to actually do something. It was the wrong choice. The haircut doesn't look bad (three months later I should probably get it trimmed or something, but it still looks OK), but I like long hair. I now begin the process of growing it out again :).

And now we've officially made it to Thanksgiving-pocalypse weekend. We are so lucky that our family gets together so often, and we are able to hang out as siblings and our kids know each other so well. That being said, I think everyone questioned this family reunion a couple times. In the three day weekend we had 18 cases of the stomach flu (out of 20 people), and when there are only two houses to go to, it got a little rough. But we had a blast all gathered together, we played lots of games, ate great food (luckily only two kids were sick before Thanksgiving Dinner), and totally enjoyed the company.

Jenaye was a rockstar that weekend, teaching the kids to crochet and busting out a few beautiful pieces herself. Olivia still cooks with the hot pad that she made all the time :). What a great Aunt!

Here are the men leaving for Turkey Bowl. At this point Carter was sick, so I wasn't at Amber's house yet that morning, but they had a great time, and weren't nearly as muddy as in Oregon. Alex was apparently too cool to pose, but the rest of them had their usual goofiness.

Meanwhile, at our house, Olivia was trying on Daddy's shoes while I was cleaning up sheets and clothes from Carter's night. Once we got ourselves together, and we were pretty sure Carter was done, we loaded up all the food from our house and headed over. We had Jenaye and Emily staying at our house, and I was very glad to have so much help. At this point we thought that the two toddlers who were sick might be a coincidence, and everyone else was feeling fine, so we carried on.

Food prep was a major process. We each came with our own lists, our own responsibilities, and spreadsheets a-plenty. Feeding 20 people for Thanksgiving doesn't have to consist of this much food, but everyone has their own favorites, and we won't turn a dish away. The kids all got in on the roll making, which Emily headed up (of course....I would say it's her specialty, except she has three or four - or more - specialties, so we kept her quite busy). The next picture is Tasha free-handing beautiful leaves to put on the Apple pie. I'm not going to lie, I was skeptical of this time-consuming project that was merely decorative. But I will admit I was wrong. This extra special touch was beautiful, and she did a great job! It just shows the different skills of our many family members I guess :). I will keep the spreadsheet and get everything in the oven on time, and Tash can make the food beautiful and yummy :).

Grandpa and the grandkids made an AWESOME pirate ship fruit bowl. I wish I had a better picture of it, but it was complete with lego crusaders and people careening (wrong word? Maybe) from one layer of the fruit display to the next. All of the kids were in awe that food could be so fun :).

Candy made this gorgeous turkey veggie platter. WAY beyond my artistic ability, and it was full of lots of yummy veggies. We munched on it all through the dinner prep, and really the entire weekend. So cute!

I think this is our victory pose for getting the last thing out of the oven. Emily has a much better victory pose than Mom and I

We officially had a kid table! Carter was the only one sick at this point, so he was missing, but we had a few other red-cheeked, or not-eating kids. We should have been aware at that point that trouble was to come, but we just let the kids eat chocolate turkeys (thanks again Candy!) and focused on enjoying the day.

After dinner we started to get a little sketchy. Kids were acting grumpy, and of the four kids on the couch, ALL were sick within 24 hours.

By that evening we had lots more illness. It was all kids that were sick at this point, but as you can tell, the grownups were pretty worn out from the food prep, so we all just relaxed and hunt out. I don't even think we pulled out games that night, we just chatted.

The next morning was the .25 sale at a local kids thrift store, so all the moms headed out to that and we came back to gingerbread man making! Yes all these kids were either recently puking or soon to be, but we do the party very well, so we couldn't give up on this one!

Friday night I got sick, and Saturday morning was Alex, so the next day when everyone went to see Frozen and talk to Santa at our cool new mall, we sent O and bowed out ourselves. They had a fun time though, and Olivia was over the moon about the new Princess movie. Now that I have seen it, I totally see why.

After that people started heading home. Tasha flew out Thursday night, and Emily, Dad, and Jenaye soon followed. the Bryan family stayed until Monday, and on Tuesday, Mom and I took our kids to Utah for some more adventures! We were mostly feeling better at that point, with some residual grumpiness but not a lot of illness. Overall a successful weekend, but our standards may have lowered at some point :).

November Crazy

Don't get me wrong, we do crazy a LOT. Like our entire lives. But we are coming out of a winter that we will be glad to say goodbye to. So here is the fun before all that happened.

Olivia was never a climber. Mess maker...yes. Adventurer...yes. But she didn't do an extraordinary amount of climbing while she was a toddler. So imagine our surprise when Alex happened upon this one afternoon! You can see the stool and drawer, his steps, but I'm still not sure how our scrawny little boy got himself all the way into the sink!

*note: I just realized that I didn't crop or edit any of these pictures...and I'm not going to, so sorry!

The next day we said 'yes' one time when we shouldn't have. I'll admit that when O says something new and funny, we are likely to say yes if we can. This time it was 'Mom, that's Old MacDonald's! We need to get ice cream. Can we ask Old MacDonald for ice cream?!'. We were laughing too hard to say no...but we discovered that 3 and 1 are not good ages to give kids ice cream in the car. Carter's was just a little ice cream in an empty cup, but you wouldn't know that by the pictures! He liked to touch it, then would give a goofy face :)

Olivia and I had a mommy dad that evening to watch Maely and Elli at gymnastics practice. It was so fun! I didn't get any pictures of Elli, but these girls have serious skill! I thought Maely was going to fall for sure, but she managed to get herself out of this mess on the rings :).

Looking back, this pictures is like a forewarning...but at the time I just had a puny little girl and didn't think anything of it. I always enjoy the snuggles of sick kids, and they enjoy the movies and crackers :).

I might have teared up a little on the 7th when I walked downstairs to this sight. We are so blessed to have a beautiful piano in our home, and it is often the center of family fun and music in our home. I love how special the kids treat it, and the fun that they have playing and singing together.

Alex had a few late days in early November. I always dread the hour between dinner and bedtime, but one day was particularly bad. The kids were just whiny, they had been all day, so after a slight loss of temper, I threw them in the wagon (buckled them both against their will of course), and gave them a blanket so we could go for a walk. We ended up walking for about 20 minutes, they were both enjoying the time outside, and were sad to go inside, but as you can tell by the second picture, they weren't properly bundled for a night walk...

Here's a helper I had sorting laundry one day. He got himself in there, was laughing and happy for about five minutes, then super mad that I wouldn't get him out. Eventually he figured it out though, and proceeded to empty the entire basket. Thanks helper!

In October we had Olivia's first drawing of a person! We follow that up with a drawing of a dinosaur :). She named it Fina, but then again she names EVERYTHING Fina :).

The 11th of November started our cabin fever. The kids just weren't very healthy, and had been sick for about a week, so we started to get creative with our entertainment. Of course the first thing we thought of was stair sledding! The kids had a blast, but it didn't work for bigger people :(.

Carter was harder to get pictures of because he doesn't have enough weight to stay on the mattress...he needs a lot of help.

Sick baby means extra video game time for Dad. But I love that he can hold him for hours without complaining while he goes back and forth between sleeping and 'helping'.

Puny Olivia fell asleep on the floor...which is a BIG deal for her. She takes a while to fall asleep normally, but she was just struggling this day.

Just some adventuring from our climber. And the reason that my computer screen has a nice scratch in it...as does the iPad. Carter's favorite place to sit all through November and December was on my computer desk, after he pushed everything on it onto the floor.

We had a blast in Oregon! My cousin Jonathon got married on Saturday, and we absolutely adore his new wife Adrienne. After the reception we headed down to Keizer for some family fun. I really wish I was better at taking pictures when we are on vacation, but here is the extent of what I got :). Kids going on the spinny 'up chairs'. They really enjoy having Grandparents who are game for repeating activities over and over and over...

On Monday we visited our good friends who had a beautiful new baby to meet! O enjoyed playing with Grace, and I just sat and chatted while loving on sweet Adelyn. What a fun treat, and a great way to spend the morning. We can't wait to visit again soon!

We always try to pack as much into our vacations as we can. This fun 4 day weekend was no exception. We had an evening at Aunt Kathy's, complete with the super exciting news of twins joining the family this spring! We can't wait, and Olivia was excited about touching her new cousins...unfortunately knowing that there were two babies prompted her to rub the wrong baby bumps :).

Our kids were healthy during our entire trip, and I was SO relieved when we got home with four full days of health. Of course we had more puke the next day...I should have kept quiet! This was just the beginning of our Winter Quarantine...but we never let that stop us from having fun and adventures :)