Catching up: Thanksgiving 2016

Time to get caught up with all the fun things we did over the holidays.  It was so fun (and hectic) that I didn't have time to write blog posts about it all.  And since so much time has passed, I won't have as many detailed stories to tell, so I may let the photos do most of the talking.

On the drive to Nebraska, the kids watched "Finding Nemo", and Emma was not a fan of the parts with the sharks or any large or scary looking fish.  She kept covering her eyes, and I got the funniest and cutest set of photos from that. :)

Emma was a little frightened during parts of "Finding Nemo"

We first went and stayed on night with my friend Kiera, who the kids call Kiki.  Then we went to visit my brother, where we met my newest nephew, Bryten, and the kids got to play with their cousins.

"Kids table" at dinner time

Connect-four with Taben.

Game time!

It was cold and rainy when we were there, so we spent most of our days indoors.  At least they have a good Children's Museum, and the kids loved it!  My favorite things were the cute pizza parlor, where we sat and Emma made us pizzas.  I also liked the giant shape forming thing (gosh I don't know what to call it!), but it's like those hand toys were you put your hand on some thin plastic or metal pins and make shapes with it.  Well, this was a big wall of red plastic pins that you could push your whole body into to make shapes.  We each took turns with this fun attraction.  They also had face painting, except instead of having a face-painter, they just had the paints out and directions how to paint various shapes.  Evan wanted a Batman symbol so I googled one and did my best, and it actually turned out pretty good!  I know he liked it so that's what mattered!

We also went to my childhood favorite pizza restaurant, Valentino's, one night for their dinner buffet.  It was kids night, so the kids ate free and there were balloon animal makers there. Score!  They made some really cool balloons for the kids. Emma got a wand with a heart on the end and Evan got a really cool (and spirally) snake!

I painted that Batman symbol for Evan! :) And I loved Evan's body print!

After a few days at my brother's, we all headed down to the farm for Thanksgiving.  I ended up getting sick and didn't eat anything during our big Thanksgiving feast, but I snuck out of bed just long enough to take a few photos of the family digging into the meal.

The rest of the time we spent at the farm, we did normal farm things.  The kids rode the giant tricycles (and Emma could reach the peddles now and enjoyed riding them on her own too!), we saw the cattle, and we rode in the farm mini-truck.  We even got to see Papa bottle-feed a few of his calves.

On one of the days, the kids started exploring around the farm and fields.  I was loving watching them all be curious, but that's when I realized at their ages the farm could still be quite dangerous for them. So I took some of them around and taught them about some of the hazards on the farm to look out for (like barbed wire, any farm equipment, and even poker/thorn bushes).  At one point Evan and Kaylee wanted to play on the hay bales.  Evan was a bit nervous about it at first, but after watching Kaylee jump from one to the next, he finally got brave enough to try it and then had a blast.

Watching Papa bottle feed the orphaned calves

Cousins having fun on the farm!

Exploring

King of the hay!

I also made sure to go visit Sarai.  I was pleased to see that they had poured a concrete slab for her headstone.  It wasn't long after this visit that she got her headstone, so I'm looking forward to getting back again soon to see her headstone in place. Miss you sweet girl!

We drove home the Saturday after Thanksgiving so that we could be home on Sunday to recoup after a long week away.  However, before we left I got to help dad work the cattle.  He had scheduled this for that Saturday and my brother was going to help, but then my brother's plans changed and so I offered to help that morning before we had to hit the road.  It was a long drive back, but we did it in pretty good time.  I couldn't help but snap a picture of Emma sleeping on the drive with Raffi as her pillow.  It was a fun trip, but we were all glad to be home.  

Since we had Sunday at home, we decided to put up the Christmas tree and other decorations that day.  It was nice to get that done before the rest of the hectic holiday season started up.  The kids helped decorate again, like they had last year, which I love having them help.