North Carolina Thanksgiving

I spent most of Thanksgiving morning preparing my contributions to the feast--rolls and pumpkin gingersnap cheesecake. We had a nice meal (I forgot to take my camera) with our usual friends. We all bring part of the meal and end up with quite the smorgasbord. Who says Thanksgiving is all about the turkey? I say it's about the side dishes.

Chris invited a friend to the dinner. Paiman is one of the residents in the radiation oncology department. On Friday the two of them went fishing. They had a good time but Chris came home with a hurt back and a head cold.

We planned to get our Christmas tree on Saturday but Kennedy and Chris were both sick so we decided to wait until next weekend. Hopefully we will all be well by then. . . .

Texas Thanksgiving

Looks like I will be the first to accept Christi's challenge by posting Thanksgiving pictures. Jared, Tae Ho and I started the day by participating in the annual Grapevine Ward Turkey Bowl.

Next, we started a project. We are remodeling Jared's old room. Step 2 - tear off old wall paper (step 1 - get rid of bedroom set).Some good friends of ours, the Davis family, invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't get Jared to look up for this picture. Tae Ho cooperated.

We polished off the meal with pie. As the picture shows, we had quite an abundance. In fact, we had 18 pies and 21 participants. Yes, there were leftovers!

Mary created an account on PhotoBucket for me the other day, and since I'm having a hard time sleeping I decided to get on and play around with it a little bit. This is the first thing I created. I thought it was pretty cute, this was taken just a few days before Shelby was put down. We sure miss her. Siennah just loves dogs, it was so cute how she'd always get up on the back of the couch so she could see her and say "doddy!" This picture is priceless to me

Happy Birthday Kennedy

We had a fun birthday party for Kennedy at Build-a-Bear this year. It was so great. She had about 10 friends come and they all got to make their own bear. All the kids were excited and I think we saw about three of the stuffed animals come to church today, not counting Kennedy's zebra that got left in the van.

Kennedy picked out a zebra of all animals. The zebra is a girl and her name is Lenny. Kennedy is very excited to be five now. She thinks that she MUST be taller than all the 4 years in her preschool class.

Today at church some of the kids were talking about birthdays in Kennedy's primary class and the teacher said that she likes birthdays too and asked them to guess when her next birthday is. When she told them it's tomorrow Kennedy broke out in . . .you guessed it, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow. . .". She is funny.

A Brunch Recipe

I did a cooking class at home for an Enrichment activity a couple of days ago. Despite the fact that my hand mixer died, the class went well. I demonstrated this recipe and it was a big hit.
Ham and Cheese Omelet Roll
4 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup milk
2 Tbsp flour
12 eggs
2 Tbsp Dijon mustard
2-1/4 cups shredded cheddar or Swiss cheese, divided
2 cups finely chopped cooked ham
1/2 cup thinly sliced green onion
Preheat oven to 350. Line the bottom and sides of a greased cookie sheet with parchment paper; grease the paper and set aside. In bowl, beat cream cheese and milk until smooth. Add flour and salt; mix until combined. In bowl beat eggs until blended. Add cream cheese mixture; mix well. Pour into greased pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until eggs are puffed and set. Remove from oven. Immediately spread with mustard and sprinkle with 1 cup cheese. Sprinkle with ham, onions, and 1 cup cheese. Roll up from a short side, peeling parchment paper away while rolling. Sprinkle top of roll with the remaining cheese. Bake 3-4 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Annie

I was just a little girl when the movie "Annie" hit the big screen. I loved it and remember singing with verve, "The sun'll come out tomorrow! Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun." There was a whole generation that looked at red hair with admiration and fascination for some time. It's been a long time since I thought about little Annie.

A few weeks ago Chris and I were discussing possible birthday ideas for Kennedy's 5th birthday. We decided that instead of buying her another toy that we wanted to "buy" her an experience. We started searching and saw that the musical "Annie" was playing in Raleigh on Kennedy's birthday. I pulled up some clips of various Annie musicals on youtube. Kennedy seemed to really enjoy it so we bought the tickets and wrapped them in pretty paper when they came in the mail.

Tuesday was the big day (birthday and the musical). When she unwrapped the gift we told her that our gift to her was that she and mom were going to get dressed, stay up late and go see Annie.

Kennedy was a fun date to this musical. She went in singing "The sun'll come out tomorrow. . .". She was excited from the very first note. There were a few times that she got a little bored but all in all I was impressed with how well she did. The musical was good too. The woman who played Ms. Hannigan was so good, hilarious.

At the end of the musical Kennedy asked me if she could give Annie two thumbs up. During the curtain call she kept asking me if it was time. Soon Annie came out and I held Kennedy up so she could see (everyone else was standing by then) and she held both her thumbs up high so Annie could see. She's such a cute girl (Kennedy, I mean).

The state of 50

Now that I have 16 days experience as a 50 year old, I have a few observations to pass on as a public service to the blogosphere:

. Better to turn 50 than the alternative
. 50 isn’t much different than 49
. Black balloons are a nice accent to an office cube
. AARP sends a nice letter on your birthday, inviting you to think of the title “Senior” in a new light
. There are two vastly different views of how old 50 is – those who are older than 50 think the age is “Young” and those younger than 50 think the age is “Old”
. The medical establishment thinks 50 is the perfect age to check plumbing
. Playing basketball is for the young at heart
. Jogging 2 miles a day keeps the doctor away
. Terms such as Seasoned and Experienced are suddenly in vogue
. It doesn’t matter what color the hair is, as long as there is hair
. Age can be used as an excuse when it is convenient
. Turning 50 adds another point toward the pension calculation
. I will never catch up to old-man Ron

Slacker

Neither Tyff or I posted anything for Halloween because that night we were on the road for about 4 hours, headed to Tremonton for our cousin Braeden's baptism the next day. I actually just got home really late on Friday night. I was gone for over a month, it feels really good to be home. First I stayed with my friends Ryan and April in Salt Lake for a couple weeks. And then I went to Boise and stayed with Tyff for a couple weeks. After the baptism in Tremonton I went down to Orem and stayed with my Grandma Marilyn for a few days when my friends Bonnie and Mary came and picked me up Friday night. I had a great vacation. It was so much fun to spend time with everyone, especially cute little Siennah and Michael. They're growing so quick.

These are pictures I took on my phone so they're not the greatest quality. I love being an aunt!

This is a picture I've been meaning to post for a while. My friend Emily took it back in... July I think it was. We were up Cedar Mountain by a little pond, just going for a walk. She has a Canon Rebel, the camera I want, it's amazing. And she has great photography skills already! Isn't this picture pretty awesome? I thought so. Anyway, that's all from me. I'm home and ready to go back to work and normal life!

Jack turned five months old today. Last week he had his first cold and was miserable. We gave him rice cereal for the first time yesterday and guess what? He likes it!

Whenever Tristan doesn't like something or he is scared he puts his hands over his ears. He spent a little time on the potty this weekend and guess what? He DOESN'T like it!

Michael's first HalLOWEen

While shopping at the Children's Place I found the cutest costume ever for Michael. I purchased it and hurried home so we could test it out. So right when I got home, Michael became a cute little penguin. Luckily it fit because he then immediately spit up all over it. (surprise, surprise) So on Halloween I went to work as usual, and since I work at the mall I was able to dress up. I chose the gorgon Medusa. After months of planning my head piece, Brendon said "Why don't you just buy a wig and put snakes in it?" So that I did and my costume was a big hit.

That evening we went and visited Grandma Marilynn, then just came home. With no trick or treaters visiting our house, we still had a bowl of candy left over just for us. (haha)

He is always so happy!

And just for fun, here is a picture of Michael I just took this morning! It made me happy and I wanted everyone to see it.

Kelsey Halloween

Life has been so busy with three kids and all the other stuff that life brings that I was really boring this year and bought Kennedy and Tristan's costumes at Party City. Kennedy really wanted to be Ariel from Little Mermaid and I got Tristan a fire fighter costume since he loves fire fighters so much.

We had the ward trunk or treat on Thursday. Tristan had his picture taken with a real fire fighter and he thought that was great. The kids got lots of candy and the Friday night door to door treating was just a bonus. Our friends live downtown and have a big party every Halloween. We start off with a white chili dinner then take the kids out for trick or treating. After a stroll up and down the street we come back for dessert and fireworks. It's always fun.

I was really boring and didn't take the time to come up with a costume for myself. I know, not like me. I've turned out to be a really boring mom. I told Chris that we were dressing up next year. That was after I saw my friend Monica and her family. She has three kids and they all dressed up like cave people and her husband was dressed as the Geico cave man. It was hilarious.

Hal-LOWE-en challenge

It was a beautiful day in the Randall neighborhood on Halloween. Until about 7:00 pm, that is, when the revelry was interrupted by rain. Tamsyn was off partying at a friend's house, so she didn't get wet, but Hippie Megyn came home a bit damp. Here she is with her dad, (yes, that is Jeff).