Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions

My class has been looking at holidays around the world-like a lot of classrooms, but this year we want to look deeper.  What is a holiday, celebration, and tradition?  It goes beyond the marked day that everyone celebrates-it's about what your family does!  Growing up we have developed/created a lot of traditions during our celebrations and these are things I will pass on to my own children.  Birthdays were always a huge deal!  We decorated the house and had a birthday sign that has managed to make it through the years (Mark and I have started one at our house).  Now that we are married things have had to change because we embrace our new family's traditions.  It's fun to hear how everyone celebrates and carries on traditions.  It is also interesting to me to find new ways to incorporate old traditions to fit our new family-things have to change a little through the years to make it meaningful for our children.  It will be interesting to see how our holidays, celebrations and traditions evolve through the years.
This year we had Thanksgiving with my family and decided to have it at the lake since this is a place that will be creating a lot of our memories.  There is something about being down there that really brings peace to me.  I don't think about my daily things at home (like my obsession to clean) and I have multiple hands to help (I know there are only a handful of people who can truly understand how hard having little ones this close can be).  We also all have our own space, but yet are all together as an extended family.

The weather was AMAZING.  I was giving my mom a hard time for her determination to buy outdoor toys-I assumed they would just play with what we had, but I was so wrong.  They all played on the deck or in the garage with the doors open.  We went for walks everyday (which were great until I remembered I was pregnant and started having little contractions).  The kids were all playing together and having so much fun-so were the adults!

Our family tradition is turkey three way.  Yep, my parents cook three turkeys!  We had a turducken, a smoked turkey and a baked turkey-they were all well over 15 ILBS.

My two men:)

Avery loved just being pushed around

The scooter was a big hit!

Greta is on the move everywhere-they heard a noise coming from the dining room and found her in my parent's bowl (from Italy).  These pictures were pretty cute.

In order to keep our Italian memories alive-the night before we made homemade pizza dough from Mario Batali! When the dough is ready we broke them into individual pizzas and put them right on the grill.  When they are crisp we added what ever topping we wanted and put them back on the grill to melt the cheese.  YUM the memories came back to me and the kids.

One finished product

I also stopped in to see my best friend Robyn who has moved to Mississippi.  Her youngest son is only a month older than Avery.  They warmed up fast and we had fun with our short but meaningful visit.

I love sharing about our family, but love to hear about others as well.  My hope is to always remember why we are celebrating holidays and have my children know what the true meaning is behind them.  It's good to take time and look at what a holiday, celebration, and traditions means and to know how we can help others or remember it's about being with those we love!  Christmas is coming up next!

Crafts and Snacks

I haven't allowed myself time to craft in a long time, but with my dad's birthday coming up I finally had a great idea!  Spending time creating made me realize how much I love to make things. 

Everyone has been talking about Pinterest and I have been using it since I decided to take on the photography aspect of our kids-it really is an amazing site to get amazing ideas. 

This year was my dad's 60th birthday and I felt it needed more than a store bought gift, so I decided to make a family tree.  My brother had been working with ancestry.com.  This gave me a lot of information to work with.  I used Pintrest to gather ideas and my best friend Celine to help me.  Together we stated the title to this blog: Crafts and Snacks.
She helped me cut out all the leaves-we started with one template so they were all the same size (not sure why this picture looks yellow, but they were different shades of green-female and male).  The paper I used was scrap booking paper

I found this great family sign in the dollar bin at Michael's!  It went perfect with my colors.

Mark came to help and Avery and Mack loved all the things to look at and play with at Miss Celine's house

Can you tell I take a lot of pictures?  He is smiling for me!

We finished our project at home due to time.  This morning was spent making cards for papa-I don't have pictures of the cards they made for Mark with our new Nanny, but they are so cool!  Turkeys with their hand prints.

They both have a craft shirt and know when they have these on they can get as messy as they want.  Someday I will get around to letting them decorate their shirts.

Here is the final product!  I LOVE the way it turned out-the tree was the hardest part, but once I decided to not worry about each generation it worked.  Then all I had to do was organize the leaves the way I wanted.

The leaves on the ground are family members dating back to the 1800's!  I hope this is something we keep for a long time for our kids to look at. 

This gives me all new ideas and perspective on Christmas gifts-let the crafting begin!  If you are interested let me know:)

This Weekend's Highlight...

This weekend's highlight was cousin Cohan.  Avery and Cohan had a play date on Saturday while the dads attempted to watch the MU game.  I took Mack and ran some errands so we could have some time together.  Avery really enjoys having her cousin over-it gives her someone new to play with!

Going in for a kiss even if he didn't like it!

Rocks are a HUGE hit at our house.  Here they decided it was fun to throw them and see if the kitties would chase them...it just makes a mess, so if you are looking at using rock for your landscaping and have kids-I would advice against it!:)

I can't get the pictures off of Mark's phone from the next day-the MAN DAY!  Mark, Scott, Mack and Cohan all went trucking.  They moved some big equipment up to another town and got to ride in the truck.  The pictures are so funny and Mack didn't want to get out.  We were talking about how these boys are OBSESSED with trucks.  How does that happen? 

We hope to get many more weekends with our only boy cousin!

There is Always Something Entertaining us at Our House

Just when I think our lives are quite...

something always happens to make us laugh! 

Avery LOVES to put on my shoes.  This night it was my new boots.  I love that she has learned to smile for the pictures!

Avery has learned to clear the table when we are finished eating-this has been very nice and she has been teaching Mack (although he is NOT allowed to carry the real plates-we found that out the hard way when he purposely threw a bowl to the ground).  This morning she was clearing the table while I was at the sink.  I heard Mack scream and knew she had taken his food away-when I told her he wasn't done, she crawled up in the chair and began spoon feeding him his yogurt.  The funny part was he let her!  They were both happy-what an amazing connection they have.  Last week, I took them to the library and they would not have anything to do with any of the other kids!  It was them playing and wrestling together (yep, we were those people who had to leave story time).  Mark and I are glad they have begun to play together and realized they have a playmate for life!  We try to remind ourselves this when things get a little bit overwhelming!

Buddies for life!  Just think of what fun they will have with the next baby boy!

More of a Dog's Life

It's a Tea Party!

Fall Back

This weekend we jumped in the car and headed to the lake for my mom's birthday! I have the privilege to not work on Fridays so we were able to leave right when we woke up in the morning. When we got there, my kids had some alone time with their papa and gama (or mom-Avery calls my mom, mom because that is what I call her). She was hooked on her and wanted to help with everything! If you know Avery this is rare because she is always hooked on me-it was nice to enjoy more time with my little man!

I had time to make my first real apple pie! It was yummy and fun to make while my parents played with Mack and Avery.

They spent a lot of time outside!

They made cookies and tried to feed the ducks, but the ducks weren't around.

Late on Friday night Brent, Sarah and the girls came. When Avery woke up she had her cousins all around her! It was nice because they can all share a room and go play on their own. Hopefully this summer Mack will be joining in!

He loves his Lucie! She always feeds him!

Mark arrived on Saturday afternoon so my mom, sister-in-law and myself headed to Spa Shiki for a some pampering! We felt it was the best of both worlds-we got to be with the kids and have a little down time away:) Facials are a must (thank you dad/papa!!!)

While we were gone papa created a feast. We had huge steaks on the grill-we fed the kids first and put them down so the adults could eat on their own. You don't realize how nice it is to sit down for a whole meal until you get to! Gama got lots of nice presents. Especially her fancy boots!

Everyone was pretty tired on Sunday morning, so I thought we would just head back, but then I looked outside and saw this:

So we stayed and had a roast with smores to top it off.

I can't believe we could eat outside on November 6th!

Then we took some family photos with the beautiful leaves!

This is my favorite picture. Even if she doesn't really understand that a new baby is coming, she loves to sing, hug, and touch the new baby. I hate taking belly pictures, but I couldn't resist this cuteness!

Family time at the lake is completely different with the new house-the kids (all 5) have so much more room to run and explore. This is the month to really think about everything you are thankful for and I can say we are so thankful to be surrounded by family on both sides! Family members are what will fill our lives with memories. I can't believe my kids already have 4 cousins with another one on the way-looks like they will get to have what I had growing up except they live A LOT closer to them. I hope to give them as much time as we can, so when they get older these are their best friends!