Thanksgiving 2012

Well, it's 2013, so it's time to blog Thanksgiving of last year!  To my credit, I've tried two other times.  The first, I was waiting on pics to download and left the computer and a child closed the screen.  The second, Blogger had problems and wouldn't let me download the pics. 

We'll start with the most important part of Thanksgiving:

The food!

John and Rose gave us a delicious turkey!

And I furnished the rolls.

We sat and talked...

And talked...

And talked.

Whiles the littles played 500.

Our gracious hosts, John and Rose!

A big thank you to them for hosting this even EVERY year!

My beautiful children enjoying a nice, relaxing holiday:

And, of course, nobody could get enough of this little peanut!

(Not, Karli!  Miss Eisley!  Though we love Karli, too!)

Don't mind Rose.  She had a little too much Martinelli's to drink ;).

And Logan was too cool to join all of us old fogies at the dinner table!

Another successful Thanksgiving!  Thanks again, John and Rose!

Six and Counting

I can't believe this little boy is six!

 What was once a little butterball of a baby is now a twiggy knock-kneed boy.

We celebrated six years of this kid with a Wreck It Ralph birthday party.

  We invited a few of his friends to join us for cake and ice cream.

Quickly opened some gifts. 

Then headed on up the road to the movie theatre where we treated this crew to a movie!

 It was opening weekend for the movie so they were all pretty excited to be some of the first to see the movie. 

 Grandma Chloe was able to join us, along with Madison who happened to be spending the weekend with Gram.  

 The kids loved the movie (I thought it was a pretty sweet little show, too).  A few came back to our place to play with some of Grayson's new toys.  He had a rather fun-filled day.

Happy Sixth, Monkey!



Halloween

October, October, October.  Let the busy months begin! 

Parties, parties, parties. 

I don't know about you, but October is a busy month around the Rowley household. 

We did manage to carve pumpkins as a family.  I don't think we've done that in two years!

 And we went to our block party.  It was a hit as usual.  Bret and I pretty much made and passed out the popcorn taking turns hunting for the kids every now and then.  Didn't get any pictures of that.

These are the only pictures I got at the ward Trunk or Treat.  Yeahhhhh, my boys are too cool to hang around with their parents, so no pictures of them.

I made it over to Aiden's Halloween party at the school while Bret went to Schnepf Farms with Grayson's class for his first field trip ever!  And neither Bret or I thought to take a camera.  Lame parents.

And Halloween night we made it over to Grandma's house to hang out for all of 10 minutes because we were rushing to get back to our neighborhood in time for trick-or-treating.   

We managed a picture with Grandma though. 

Grandma, cousin Everett (skeleton...Kendra hadn't done his make-up yet), Mabel (Beauty Queen), Gray (wolf), and Aiden (Ninja...without his mask).  And Chloe sniffing around Grayson's bag.

Phew!  What can I say?  October was a whirlwind of partying!  It's a love hate thing.  You know how I likes me a good par-tay, but it sure takes it out of ya!

Hope everyone had a fantastic Halloween.  Now, I'm off to steal some candy from the littles!

R2D2?

A few mornings ago we were having family prayers before sending Bret off to work.  It was my turn to pray and as I was praying Bret received a text.  His text alert sound is a soft whistle.  Well, the whistle sounded and I hear Aiden give a quick intake of breath.  I'm not sure what it's about so I keep praying.  Then Aiden says, "What?"  There's a pause, but I, being used to my kids not being so reverent during prayers, keep praying still.  Then Aiden pipes up again, "Did you hear R2D2?"

I busted up laughing.  I'd never thought about it but I guess the whistling sound does sound like R2D2.

Family Fun

 One of Bret's vendors for work had a family appreciation day at the US Airways Arena so we loaded up the kiddos and headed on over to Phoenix!

As we entered the arena, we were greeted by a few of the Suns cheerleaders...or are they called dancers now?  Or both?  I don't know, I can't keep it straight. 

 They had giant blow up toys for the kids to bounce around in and slide down.

There was a lady doing balloon animals for all of the kids.  Grayson and Mabel got dogs.

 I wasn't so impressed with the dogs she made, but the kids loved them.  All of her other animals were sooo much better.  Aiden later got a dinosaur that was really cool but I didn't get a picture of it.  I was avoiding him like the plague!  More on that later.

 There was a candy table set up where the kids could fill little baggies with their favorite candies...we sampled them all!

 They had a cartoonist doing charicatures of families.  I managed to get one of my kids even though Aiden was a bit ticked off about it.  Full story:  I made him step out of the animal balloon line to sit for the picture.  He made a choice not to stand in line with us when we were doing the balloon animals.  Instead he chose to play the Kinnect they had set up and go on the bouncers when I told him we would do that later.  I told him I wanted a picture of all of the kids and he needed to be in it.  We made it up to the front of that line before he made it to the front of the balloon line so he had to leave the line.  Too bad, so sad. 

 Another picture of Aiden on this terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day!

 Mabel got her face painted like a kitty...

...then ruined it eating cotton candy!

I'd say it was worth it, but I don't know if she would agree.  She asked me about 50 times if her "make-up" was still on.

They fed us a lunch that was mighty tasty!

Bret enjoyed being able to shoot hoops on the Suns basketball court. 

 I enjoyed winning one of the drawings!  We got a $100 gift card to some restaurants and $50 to AMC theaters.  And a bag of chips and salsa! 

 After winning the drawing they took pictures of Bret and the kids with the Suns Gorilla.  I didn't have the best angle to sneak in on the snapshot.

Mabel wanted her picture with the Gorilla.  But when Bret took her over there for it, she chickened out.  We sat down at the coloring table instead.  While she was coloring away, none other than the Gorilla himself came over and started coloring with her.  It was cute.  She wouldn't take her eyes off of him for more than a second while was there.  She would look at the camera, but kept watching him out of the corner of her eye.  Then she decided she'd had enough of the coloring.  But she wanted to take her picture home to finish it.

A fabulous family fun day...for free!  Gotta love that.