Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. My mom and two sisters came down from St. Louis for the holiday and we had a lot of fun. They were supposed to visit a year and a half ago, but for various reasons they were never able to make it.

It was so fun to have Naga with us. (For those of you who don't know, Naga is the name Kimball gave my mom when he was younger. It was his way of saying Granny. Naga just sort of stuck and she is Naga to Rebecah as well, although Rebecah pronounces it "Gaga". People have asked how my mom feels about being called Naga and my mom doesn't mind because she knows it was a name given in love.) Naga gave a lot of attention to Kimball and Rebecah. There was story time and walks each day. She also played with them on the floor.

Rebecah was very curious about Heather and would ask for her almost constantly, but Rebecah was never quite brave enough to sit with Heather or have a kiss from Heather.

We played games and watched Christmas movies in the evenings and helped my mom use her new Christmas present from us...a set of Hand bells. We had a lot of fun learning Joy to the World and Jingle Bells. Alas, no hand bell pictures...all hands were needed for ringing!

Playing Sequence States and Capitols

Annette and Rebecah



Heather, Chandra, Kimball, and Naga



Kimball and Naga thinking of strategy.



For Thanksgiving dinner we also had the missionaries over so it was a full table. We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, cranberries, green bean casserole and two types of pie. I'm not a pumpkin pie fan so we broke with Thanksgiving tradition and I made a sweet and salty truffle pie and my mom brought a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie pie. Both pies were chocolaty and good. We had pumpkin scones with berry butter for breakfast Thanksgiving morning. The scones were a big hit.

Eating Dinner
Joseph helping the kids with their plates.




At Lake Dardanelle State Park



Naga with Kimball and Rebecah



Heather and Chandra



Friday we decorated for Christmas and our company left on Saturday. It has been hard for Kimball to have Naga, Heather and Chandra gone. He keeps asking when they can visit again. He also comments that he wishes he could have them visit "forever". That is saying something since he slept on the floor 3 nights in a row!

Bobo? Earl?

A few months ago we checked out the book I Must Have Bobo! It is a story about a little boy who has a sock monkey, Bobo, that Earl, the cat, keeps stealing. Rebecah LOVED the book to say the least. We read it multiple times before we returned it to the library. Over the last few weeks we'll say a line from the book like "Hey, Earl!" and Rebecah thinks it is great. Recently she has taken to wandering around the house saying Earl? Bobo? looking for Earl and where he has hidden Bobo. It's pretty cute to watch. Little does she know, I have gotten the book for her for Christmas...

Too Bloody...

I noticed that Kimball's hair was getting a little long recently and I asked him if he wanted a hair cut. This was our conversation:

A: Kimball, would you like a haircut?
K: No, I don't like haircuts.
A: How come?
K: They're too bloody.

At this point I started laughing. The last few times Joseph has cut Kimball's hair he has accidentally cut Kimball just a little bit. I guess one time wasn't so little because Kimball had a little trickle of blood. Kimball wasn't too bothered by the blood and cut because he was watching a car video while Joseph did his hair. Joseph tries his best not to cut Kimball, but occasionally it happens. No wonder haircuts are too bloody!

Cars Galore

This summer, Kimball participated in the Summer reading program at the Library. It was our first year to participate and it was different. Kimball was able to have his name put in the front of one of the new library books to honor his achievement in completing the reading program. We were finally able to check the book out so we could read the cool book that was in honor of Kimball. I helped him pick the book that bore his name. It was a very fitting book for him and must be popular because I had to actually request it, and wait 6 weeks, in order for us to read it.

A Trip to the Temple

Over the weekend we went to Memphis, TN to attend the temple. While the kids and I waited for Joseph to finish in the temple we walked around the temple grounds. The temple nativity was out already so we took a picture by it.



I thought this was cute of Rebecah.

Halloween

We had a really fun Halloween. Saturday night we went to our ward's Halloween activity. It was a chili cook off followed by a trunk or treat. The dinner started quite late so we had to leave before the trunk or treating even started. To compensate Kimball for missing out on the trunk or treating, we had a hunt or treat at our house. I hid some candy around the house and Kimball and Rebecah hunted for it and put it in their buckets. We made sure the got enough candy to make up for missing out on the activities at church. It was fun!

On Halloween the kids dressed up. Kimball was a fireman and Rebecah was a giraffe. Rebecah tried wearing her costume a number of times but it was always off within 2 minutes. Last night we put her costume on as we went out the door to go trick or treating and she kept it on until bedtime!

All dressed up!



Fireman Kimball!



We had a lot of fun trick or treating. We just did the 9 houses on our block...9 doesn't sound like much, but after 7 houses Kimball said that he was ready to go home because his bucket was getting heavy! (He wanted to keep his candy from Saturday night in his bucket so that made a difference, also most of the houses gave multiple pieces of candy.) We finished the 2 houses we hadn't visited and then went home. Kimball had great things to say about trick or treating. He thought it was great that we lived on the street where people gave out candy. I don't think he quite realized that most streets were giving out candy. Both kids did really well at saying "thank you".

Once we got home we turned on our house lights and gave out candy for 40 minutes until bedtime. Rebecah and Kimball took turns giving candy to the children that came by and they thought it was great fun. The crowds were less than in the last two years...maybe having Halloween on a Monday kept people from being out late and going to all of the neighborhoods.

We now have plenty of candy to satisfy us for a couple of weeks.

Sitting on our porch with our jack-o-lantern.

A Visit to the Pumpkin Patch

We had a fun fall family activity over the weekend. We went to a Pumpkin Patch that was about an hour away. It was a lot of fun. We started our afternoon with a hayride...it wasn't the hayride we thought it was since it didn't take us to the pumpkin patch...but it was still fun.

Kimball on the hayride.



Rebecah snuggling up next to the pumpkins.



With the pumpkins.



There were animals at the Pumpkin Patch and we enjoyed seeing sheep, goats, rabbits, ducks, turkeys, a pig, and a calf.

Kimball feeding a goat.



Feeding the calf.



There were two hay tunnels that the kids could walk through. They enjoyed doing this multiple times.



Coming out of the tunnel




You have to love Rebecah's cheesy smiles these days. She is getting ready to go down a slide. She loves them.



Annette, Kimball and Rebecah as we are leaving. Our pumpkin is at our feet.



A family shot as we are leaving.