Happy Thanksgiving!

We had our first thanksgiving at our home this year. It was really nice but a ton of work! Whew, I was so glad to finally sit down and eat! Since it was my first time to cook everything myself, I wanted to make everything homemade. Some things turned out better than others...

Matt and I started out the morning with an hour and a half walk around our very hilly neighborhood. How out of shape do you have to be that your still sore 2 days after a walk? Not like I ran a marathon, just went walking. I must have been working my gluteus-maximus cause that's whats sore! PS - I have no idea if that's how you spell that because both words popped up on spell check and it didn't give any suggestions. :)

Then we sat around and watched the parade and ate some of this.





I didn't start cooking till about 1:00. I made cornbread stuffing (and the cornbread and regular bread that went into it), holiday cranberries (next year I'll just go back to the can), green bean casserole (Matt thinks this made him sick, even though nobody else is sick), homemade crescent rolls, garlic mozzarella mashed potato's, corn in butter, broccoli with cheese (okay those last two were straight from their frozen packages), and sweet potato casserole (with fresh sweet potato's). Matt fried the turkey, Alexis helped me make a turtle pie, and Christian helped me make a pumpkin pie cheesecake. Here are some pictures of our excitement. :)





The table at the halfway point.


Matt trying to open our Ikea peach sparkler. We all liked it, but we also tried a bottle of what I thought was root beer from Ikea, and Lex and I about threw up! Icky! Matt and Christian liked it, so they shared.


Look how happy Addie is!



Just like a little turkey flapping her arms!


Hope you had a happy thanksgiving!

The Adventures of Alexis... and the rest of us

Alexis has been very busy! She started a blog about a week ago, right around the time she started tennis lessons. She loves both! She thought she sent out invites for her blog, but apparently she didn't since no one received them... so be looking for the official invitation!

Anyways, here are some pics of her tennis playing. She is really good! And she seems to really enjoy it! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is her "thing." My philosophy with extracurricular activities is to let them try lots of things until they find their one (or two, or three) "thing." She's tried loads of sports, dance, etc, and even though she was good, it just wasn't her passion. So this mama is wishing and hoping that Lex likes this and wants to stick with it!



Christian also had a memorable first. He got to ride his bike to school with a friend last week. The school is more than three miles away, and we live in a really hilly area, but he made it and even wanted to do it again. I was fine with it except that they got to school late. Both days. Soooo, we're gonna try it again later. I stood on the back porch taking pictures of him leaving. On his bike. All alone. I'm so sad that they are getting so big!



And just so I don't leave anyone out, here are Matt, Addie, and me. We're all pretty much doing the same ol', same ol'.



Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Twilight at Midnight

Alexis, Addison, and I got to go see Twilight at midnight on Thursday. After debating all week about leaving Addie with Matt I decided to take her because she's been sick and waking up a lot. She only made one little peep towards the end of the movie and other than that she was a perfect angel!

We bought our tickets earlier in the week, but even when we got to the theater at 10:45 there was a huge line of people! We went with 9 people from our new ward, 4 ladies and 5 teens. Before the movie started they asked 4 trivia questions and gave posters to the right answers. Our little group got 3 of the 4 posters! And one of the ladies gave hers to Lex so that was fun!



The movie... was funny. Funny at parts that it wasn't really supposed to be funny. Kinda seemed low budget. The make-up really bothered me, why were Edwards lips sooo red?! And Jasper... so funny! We also really enjoyed the love scene in the tree! The whole theater was cracking up! I thought Jessica was perfect and Charlie was pretty good too. Hopefully they'll have a little better budget for the next one! Either way we were so glad we got to go have a fun girls night out! Can't wait for the next one!

Look what Addie can do!

Addie has a new trick! She can sit up!




She's not perfect at it and has had some spills...


But she just gets right back up to sitting (with a little help from us) and playing. She pretty much hates rolling over. I think she's done it a total of ten times or less. That's probably mostly our fault because she doesn't spend a ton of time laying on the floor. She's surrounded by four people that love to hold her. And the month after she learned how to roll over was spent moving and in hotels, and I wasn't about to lay her on the hotel floor, even on a blanket, gross! So it looks like we just might skip the whole rolling over phase.



She does scoot on her back. She's cried in her crib a couple of times because she's scooted all the way to the top bars. And when she does lay down on the floor she scoots in circles and everywhere. She's getting so big!

Saturday in Sacramento

Even though I say we live in Sacramento, we are really living about an hour outside of Sacramento in Penn Valley. So for our Saturday adventure we planned a trip into Sacramento to take Matt to the capital, go ice skating, and walk around Old Town.

Our first stop was the capital for a picnic lunch.


I absolutely love all the trees on the grounds. They have trees from all over California, from huge redwoods to palm trees. My favorite are the many fruit trees lined up in a row. Last time we were there I noticed the orange trees also had limes growing on them which I though was so cool that I am sharing with you. So enjoy.



I took this cute picture of our girls and Addie was doing her famous bottom lip suck. So my funny family decided to do "The Addie". Of course, Addie declined to do her pose with the rest of the fam, but it's still cute.


Then we went ice skating at a downtown outdoor skating rink. I've never been to an outdoor rink so I thought that was so cool! Alexis and Matt took to the ice right away but Christian wasn't loving it. Here he is doing what he did for the first half hour of skating (in between coming out and asking me if he had to skate!).


Then after a little help from dad he started to like it a little better.


Not much, but a little better.


Alexis did awesome!


And of course Matt had to do some goofy tricks. He's such a rockin' skater!


Here's how Addie and I enjoyed the skating. I like ice skating and was planning on participating, but one: I forgot my socks and two: it cost $8 (with sock rental) and I'm cheap. I figured someone would have to sit out the whole time with Addie so why not save 8 bucks and volunteer myself. I'm really not a wet blanket, just economical.


After that we went over to Old Town. They have lots of cute stores and then the river is right there, so after perusing the shops we walked on the river. It was already getting dark so we didn't take a lot of pictures, but we did ask one of the sailors to take this picture of us with the boat he works on. So fun!



After the river we went shopping. Have I mentioned that I love to shop? Our mission was to buy Addie a high chair because we decided the booster I bought a couple weeks ago probably wouldn't be safe with our high table. We didn't buy one yet because I remembered (as we waited in line to pay) that I have a 15% off coupon that I can use starting November 30. There's that economical Michelle again.

We had a fun, tiring day out and can't wait for our next Saturday adventure!

Extra long fun!

Lex and I were shopping at a grocery outlet and found these super long twizzlers and HAD to get them! We love twizzlers up in here! So here is some of our extra long fun!



I had to make them pose like this, they hated it. I think it looks cute!




Twizzler smiles to you!

Presents, avocados, and other stuff

Not much going on around here. I am still trying to get caught up on all the post-move cleaning/organizing. I am loving cooking every night, although I had blocked out the whole clean-up part of cooking. That part I do not love, but oh well.

Christian had two friends over yesterday. When I went to pick them up at school yesterday (at 12:15! School gets out so early here! Even on regular days it gets out at 2:30! I'm not complaining... well, maybe I am a little)they asked if they could walk the 3+ miles home. He had his phone on him so I though that was okay. They had fun playing with their nerf guns and on the Wii. They even *gasp* let Alexis play nerf guns with them for awhile.

Alexis has made some friends but is still scoping out just which crowd she wants to join. I'm pushing her to invite a friend over Friday night, so we'll see what happens. She did get invited (and subsequently I got ditched) to go see Twilight at the midnight showing the night it comes out. She's gonna go with some super cute girls from church, so I might call their mom and see if we can sit together in the back. :)

Matt is busy as ever. He got a new calling at church that I will tell as soon as he's set apart on Sunday. (Bishop said they hadn't had any inspiration yet on me. Wonder what that means?!:) He worked most of his Veterans Day organizing the garage and we can now park BOTH of our cars inside! That's a big deal because it never happened in Clovis! We got close, but could never quite fit them both in.

And that leaves Addie. I realized I hadn't taken pictures of her for a couple days so yesterday while she was enjoying (or maybe not enjoying)some avocado, I took a bunch. 92 to be exact. Not all of her eating, but a lot of her eating. She also got her first experience opening presents when we gave her a gift from my Aunt Darcie to unwrap. She totally knew she wanted to open it, just couldn't quite figure out how. Here is Addie and her first attempt at opening presents.









Isn't it cute?! It fits perfect and is just right for this cold weather! Thanks Darcie!

Before all the exciting present opening, I fed her some avocado. She's still not loving solid food, so I don't push it too much. It's pretty cute stuff!


Yummy!







I just had to get a close up! Looks tasty, huh?! She was kinda done at that point so I gave her the spoon to play with since she was such a good girl.




She loves blowing raspberries!!!




Then she gagged herself.


And then she hit herself in the eye. Don't worry, she just kept right on flinging the spoon around!


See where she hit herself? Goofy girl!



Then her finger missed her mouth. Look how far she got it up there!



And that is some first-feeding-fun! And to think, I get to have fun like this every day! I am the luckiest girl in the world! No seriously, I am!