The Thanksgiving Novel

Our Thanksgiving week was spent in Utah!

Our visits are always a whirlwind of fun

and we never actually do everything we wish we could, but we packed a lot in.

The first night I dropped the kids off at Grandma Bonnie and Papa Jeff's and went to dinner at The Roof!

I am salivating just thinking about it.

It was such a fun way to actually converse with my parents, sisters and brother in laws. We missed Ben who flew in later that week.

Yep, that happened.

I had a chance to visit Erin one of my close friends from Pullman. She moved to Utah (who thought that would have happened, ha!) It was so good to see her and her kids and remind each other that moving is hard and friendships are forged with time and opportunity. I do miss a wild girls' night in a limo:)

Mackayla really wanted to ride Rio.

She asked me about it several times before we came. We were so lucky the weather was good enough to do it!

She giggled the entire time she got to ride.

Macey trotted around for a bit and loved it.

Cody loves it, but this sweet guy would love to ride the tractor around too.

On our way to Utah I realized there was a high probability we would get the flu. We did. Three days in. I have no idea why on earth I took so many pictures of my sick kids but I did and we all get to enjoy them. They are just of us laying around, but I'm just going to warn you now in 7 pictures I show a DISGUSTING picture of vomit, so just skip past it if you are going to dry heave. This vomit was projectile and Cody was laying down when it projected up...then down. It was one a.m. but my phone was just sitting in the bathroom when he went to shower and it was begging me to use it.  Ben and I laughed about it for days. You're welcome in advance.

They threw up on both beds in the middle of the night. That. is awesome.

So this is what we did for two days of our vacation but they were totally worth it for the other days we had there. Of course, I didn't get sick, so maybe that would be a different story otherwise. And I feel terrible that we passed it on to Amy. Not ideal for a baby blessing.

They got plenty of oils rubbed on their feet by grandma.

Mackayla got sick the day after the other two. This day she was good and maybe a little neglected:)

But not completely!

Macey is surprisingly sweet when she's sick.  I think cute Indie was a fan of the calm version of the kids!

And this...this is the cleaned up version.

Benson had quite the month this month with doctor appointments and surgeries. He got an iron man/ninja turtle belly button, aka, a g tube put in the week before we got there. He also got a back brace. He is a trooper. Incidentally, that week everyone in my entire family - everyone - got the flu, except him. He wouldn't have been able to get that surgery if he got sick. And they had to head back home to Missouri soon after. Small miracles happen every day and we are all grateful. 

Thanksgiving Day was at the Crosland's.

I started getting pictures of all the attendees.

I got less than half. woohoo. Cute Jessi and Stefan.

 Blake entertained us all by giving us her church talk. It went on for like ten minutes. Just when I thought it would be over she would just thoughtfully pause and go on...how does such a little person memorize volumes of information?

 Yum!!!

 We went to see Frozen that night. Sooo cute!

Macey sat by Jessi and Bonnie and as the word Frozen came up she read "Fro-zen. Or is the R silent?" :)

 Friday was Thanksgiving at the Purdy's.

Just to make it interesting we started the day with family pictures. It is the first time in a long time that most of us were together. Unfortunately, Eric wasn't able to make it, but we did get to visit him on our drive up. The kids love uncle Eric.

This was our beautician.

 These are just my little stand-by-the-actual-photographer versions:)

 grandma and grandpa are the only ones not smiling in this one:)

 The smile support

 Group hug

 This is Right before Mackayla gave Brody a good shove to back off. Sorry buddy, she likes her space in large groups.

This was a perfect trip to fill Mackayla's love of puppies. Eric had a puppy chihuahua, Nette and Jon brought Rocky their Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever (who named that?), Jessi had Roxy, and Becky and Brett brought Fill (Phil? from Fillmore!), and of course Indie. He's not a puppy, but he's little.

 Brigham kills me. He loves the spotlight and loves to get a laugh out of people. What a fun little guy!

 We had our taste test. We did chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice cream.
There were a few homemade recipes and a few store bought recipes. This was the unanimous winner, but Pillsbury store bought was second - good to know. Actually the type of chocolate chips affected the votes too.

 winner

 Vanilla ice cream isn't my favorite. weird. But Blue Bunny was the winner out of Dreyers, Breyers, Turkey hill and something else. 

Cute Brody.

I love hate McDonalds{it's complicated}.

Actually whoever thought up playplaces was a genius.

They're disgusting but kids don't care.

This is our drive back. We left on one of the busiest travel days of the year, Sunday. Dumb move. Everyone on earth was driving home from Vegas. We were delayed four hours and went 10 miles/hr for like 100 miles. We stopped in Baker to use the women's bathroom and the line was 45 minutes long. sheesh. I chose to hold it and chose Macey a good field.

I suppose this post is way too short, so here's Mackayla drawing with her cute little intense precision. She loves to draw!

Every once in a while a squiggle will turn into a heart and she will proudly declare that she drew a heart.

I am Thankful for so many things this year...that will be another post!

Macey's Surprise Party

Macey turned FIVE today!

She had a Rainbow Birthday.

I LOOVE this face, with some serious wind up.

She asked everyone for a week before her party (it was in Utah on the last day of our trip) if they were coming to her surprise birthday party.

Finally, Amy asked her how it was a surprise if she knew it was coming.

So she explained that the surprise will be that she will wake up and the whole house will be decorated, and she will be so surprised.

I don't think I can convey the level of excitement Macey had for this party.

Thanks go to Bonnie for letting us use her house and helping.

She carefully picked out her cake on pinterest.

This cake inside was made with love by me and decorated with even more love by my sisters Becky and Steph, all night!

They are AMAZING!!

The party attendees were our families!

Another awesome part of this birthday was that at the party we were going to make candy necklaces.

I didn't actually know this, but Macey told everyone that.

So Bonnie went and bought lifesavers the day before for the kids to make them:)

This shirt above has a heart and a pocket on it: two of Macey's favorite parts of shirts. So this is her current favorite shirt:)!

We painted nails rainbow colors.

These are our awesome beauticians.

This was the honorary guest, my sweet new nephew baby Logan!

And a rainbow pinata of course!

For her actual birthday today Ben took her on a date to get ice cream.

She asked me ALL. day. when dad would get home.

and when she would go get ice cream with dad.

These two didn't get to go.

we didn't plan those faces:)

They went to Baskin Robbins. Macey is a very deliberate chooser. She had Ben read every single flavor carefully so she could choose. They have a lot of flavors so that explains why they were gone so long:)

Now something about Macey everyone should know because it's awesome is that when she is excited she talks a Million miles an hour, Nonstop.

It's really cute.

Ben said she talked the whole time, and Macey said they talked about eating ice cream.

She got bubble gum ice cream and her favorite part was eating the bubble gum.

She really wanted rainbow fruit kabobs at the party but we ran out of time. So we had them today. I would have used mandarin oranges, they're prettier...but I ran out of time and had none!

A while ago I got a book from the library 

The Big Big Sea by Martin Waddell

When I read it to Macey she was Enchanted with it and asked me if we could do that.

It's about a mom and little girl who go to the sea together one night, just the two of them.

So last night we went.

I didn't tell Macey where we were going I had her guess.

I told her it was somewhere fun and 

she guessed "SCHOOL!"

When we got to the parking lot and I finally told her, the beach just like the book.

She told me she didn't like the beach but decided it would still be fun to go.:)

We went with two lollipops and a flashlight down and I'm not going to lie it was not peaceful the way I pictured; it was kinda freaky walking down alone.

But we were the only ones on the whole beach and the stars were bright.

It was worth it.

Then we had hot chocolate and read the tales of peter rabbit at home.

I think things got more and more involved because Macey was just so dang excited about it all.
One thing about her though, she never expects anything. She is kind of mature in that way and always incredible grateful for everything. And Excited!
We love your sugar and spice, and sure love you Macey!