Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a busy Thanksgiving this year. We had both sides of the family there. My mom, brother and sister came up from Boise, and Dan's parents came up from Oregon City, and Dan's brother Steven and his family who live just around the corner from us were here. It was a full house but it was nice to get together with everyone to celebrate. Kiera absolutely loved having two sets of grandparents here and loved seeing her aunt Kayla and uncle Nathan. From the minute they arrived she was never left alone. Now it is the trick to get her back into a quieter routine. The above picture is of her pretending to be tinkerbell. She danced around in her tutu and handmade wings while playing with a set of play dishes from Grandma Lazenby. You can tell she was having fun.


We also decorated for Christmas this past weekend. Dan and I put up the outside lights the day before Thanksgiving and the following night as well. My sister Kayla also helped us. It looks very pretty at night. I think the lights are one of my favorite parts of Christmas. Maybe the fact we put them up even befor Thanksgiving was over is proof of that. I will post pictures of the outside lights a little bit later but for now here are some of the other decorations we put up.
I found this nativity at a yard sale during the summer. It also has three wise men and a shepherd and an angel that hangs above the manger but I wanted to get a close up to show you they were snowbuddies. Cute huh?


I made the star for the tree out of thick black wire from Home Depot. I got tired of tryin gto find one that I really liked so I made my own. I absolutely love it! The tree is really pretty too. We put both white and red lighs on this year. All the breakables are on the top half of the tree and Kiera rearranges the bottom ones several times a day.


Ethan is absolutely facinated with the tree too. He is much more enthusiastic when it comes to crawling now too. I think it helps that he is going after something new and shiny! Here's a picture of him playing with the low branches and bead garland that Kiera had dubbed "necklace."


Grandma Lazenby and Kiera were an inseperable pair during my families visit. It was nice to share the tradition of decorating the tree with them while they were here. Here's Grandma and Kiera wearing the star garlands as crowns, what beautiful Christmas princesses.


I collect Santa Clauses and love getting my collection out every year. And we have the perfect shelf to display them on in this house. It is up high out of the kids' reach and it makes the empty ceiling space very festive. Come on over if you'd like to see them up close. It is hard to see them all in this picture.


We inherited the famous "Bears on Stairs" from Dan's mom Shellie. All the figures are toll painted and decorated with lots of small details. Ignore the little blue truck and action figure. I didn't realize they wer still on the shelf when I took this picture. I need to return those toys to a boy I babysit.



Ethan loved watching us decorate the tree and was anxious to get his hands on something. We finally handed him a plastic ornament to keep him entertained while we finished up decorating.

Can you tell how excited Kiera was to get the tree up? She loves to rearrange the winnie the pooh figures and line them up on the windowsill .

Dan took this picture of Ethan while his mom Shellie got some grandma time in. He is such a happy little boy!
Thanks everyone for pitching in on Thanksgiving dinner. It made the whole thing sooo much easier and it was fun to have family here with us. We also loved being able to use our new kitchen table with all the leafs in it. It gets a lot bigger than I expected it to. I will post more pictures of our weekend a little later. But for now I need to get some more things done. Take care