It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

So, I feel a little fickle. But my sister-in-law Katie figured out that she could still use Blogspot if she just made her pictures smaller. I'm sure I would have loved Wordpress eventually, but it was not as simple to use as Blogspot (for us who have no clue about websites and computers...) So here I am back at blogspot. I copied over my Thanksgiving posts, so those are still here for all of you to see too! :)

When we got home on Sunday we got a tree and put up our Christmas decorations. I had great aspirations of going to cut down a tree together this year, but those dreams were quickly smashed when I realized the closest tree farm was about an hour from our house. Who wants to drive an hour when we've been driving for 9 days?!

Luckily Walmart had a good selection of pre-cut trees (and the kids didn't know any different...)

I felt a lot like my mom handing out ornaments for the kids to put on the tree, but we all become our moms in some ways, right?! Lucky for me, I don't mind being like my mom! :)

I was proud of myself that I let the kids put the ornaments wherever they wanted and haven't moved them at all. Joe gave a little guidance every once in a while, but for the most part the kids put on their own ornaments.

As we were looking at the picture above, both Joe and I remembered a similar picture of Joey decorating our tree when he was 2. So cute!

Kylah got to put the star on top of the tree this year. She doesn't remember ever decorating a big tree because we haven't been able to have one for the past 3 years! 3 years ago we were moving to Arkansas; the next year we had to have a really small, fake tree to fit in our little house; and last year we were moving to our current house. You can imagine why I really wanted to have a real live tree this year! :)

Our current house doesn't have a fireplace, so we don't have a great spot to hang our stockings. I ended up hanging them in our entryway. It turned out pretty cute for only using nails. :) Meredith is going to give me a cute wood hanging to hang stockings on, so hopefully it will be even cuter!

The finished product.

I have enjoyed a few evenings of (decaf) coffee and sitting in the tree-lit living room after the kids are in bed. It's quite peaceful!

Thanksgiving Part 3

Thanksgiving day we met up with all of my brothers, their families, my parents, and my uncle and his whole family at my uncle's house. We stayed here for the rest of our time in Nebraska. Thankfully, my aunt and uncle have an awesome old, big, beautiful house that can fit all of us.

Thanksgiving day if full of cooking, cooking and more cooking. And lots of people in the kitchen.

My dad and two of his siblings. (they are all awesome cooks!!)

 Nick stepped in as the official potato masher, since Tony wasn't there quite yet.

Me and my beautiful mom.

 

The kids were so cute at their own kids table. And they loved having sparkling grape juice in real (breakable) glasses!

 

Kylah was with us at the big table at first, but we soon moved her in with the "big" kids.

 

Michael asked for a turkey leg, and he looked pretty cute eating it too!

 

 Me and Dad and Grandma.

 

Norah and Luca "helped" Gramma with the dishes.

The annual football game was more of a practice, but it still happened. I didn't participate, but I did manage to find someone to take a picture for me.

 

These four cousins are so cute together. They are having a snack, or eating a meal, or...well, I'm not sure...we pretty much ate the entire time we were there! 

I sneaked away Friday morning to go meet some of my great high school friends for coffee in Lincoln. We had a great time catching up. I love that with good friends it doesn't matter how long it's been since we've seen each other!

 

Back at my uncle's house, we enjoyed some relaxing time of playing cards, watching football, and playing games.

I love my sisters-in-laws!

 

Andy always steals my camera and takes a million pictures. This one was pretty funny, though. 

We enjoyed quite a few games of Pitch during the weekend. Esther and I easily won this game... :) 

Speaking of cards, these two wanted to get in on the action.

Norah love her Nona!

 

My uncle always cooks a fabulous meal on Saturday night. We spent most of the weekend trying to figure out what he was going to make. He never disappoints.

He put us all to work helping prepare the meal.

 

Apparently one of the Manes traits is cooking way too much food. (my dad does the same thing!) I don't think this was even half of it. It definitely did not disappoint, and was fabulous! 

The whole group on Saturday night. I wish we would have thought to get a group picture on Thanksgiving because we are missing a few people in this picture. Next time! 

We had such a great time. The kids did really great for as much traveling as we put them through. We were sad to say goodbye to our family, but we were pretty glad to get home to our own beds! :)

Thanksgiving Part 2

So on Sunday morning we headed up to Nebraska. We hadn't been back to Omaha for 2 years, so we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to see our friends there before Thanksgiving started with family.

We first headed over to see Chris and Erin. They are some of our first friends that we had in Omaha. Erin was in PA school a year before I was, so we were matched as "buddies" that first year I was in PA school (Erin had requested that since she had also gone to JBU for a little while). Joe and Chris had a lot in common too so we soon became great friends.

Anyway, their son Ethan is only a few months younger than Joey, so they've always played well together. We were excited to be able to celebrate Ethan's birthday with him while we were there. They also have little Wyatt, who is almost 3, and little baby #3 is on the way!

 

We had a great time talking and reminiscing, especially while the kiddos were busy decorating bags and were quiet. :)

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Next we headed over to Amy and Greg's house, where we stayed for the next 3 nights. It was so great to see Amy and Greg and their two kiddos, Logan and Olivia. Our kids hadn't seen each other in over a year, but they picked right up as if they had seen each other recently. I love that about good friends!

 

We headed to the zoo on Monday. Omaha has one of the best zoos in the nation, so we were excited to see it while we were there. The kids all had a great time seeing the animals. The penguins were a favorite.

 

Love these kiddos!

 

Everyone had a great time feeding the fish, even though I made everyone a little paranoid about leaning over the railing...

 

The next day was beautiful, so we headed to a park for some basketball, sand box, and tennis. We adults even got a game of tennis in together while the kids were all playing in the sand. I call that success! :)

Joe spent a little bit of time having a little basketball practice with Logan and Joey.

 

While the girls played in the sand...

 

The kids played games, the Wii, and out in the backyard together. They had such a great time!

 

We had such a fun time with Greg and Amy. We had so much fun staying up late with them after we put all the kiddos to bed. We were able to chat, play games, and play the Wii (and we all learned that I am not very good at the Wii!) It went way too fast! We'll definitely need to get together again soon. :)

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On Wednesday afternoon, we headed over to Sarah and Tom's house. Sarah and I grew up together, and we haven't seen each other in 2 years, so it was great to catch up. And it was so great to meet their daughter, Berkeley, who is just one month older than Norah.

 

These two were adorable together. It was like seeing a mini-Michelle and a mini-Sarah!

 

Joey and Kylah also had a blast playing with toys and especially riding on the 4 wheeler! Joey remembered that Tom and Sarah had a 4 wheeler, so he was so excited to get to ride it again!

 

It was great to catch up with Tom and Sarah. We stayed up late (by late, I mean like 11:00...) playing cards and talking.  :)

Next up, Thanksgiving with family...

Thanksgiving Part 1

I'm going to have to split our Thanksgiving trip up into parts so it's less overwhelming for me to blog about. We were gone for 9 days, so I have a lot to blog about!

We started our marathon of a trip a week ago Friday. We first stopped in Kansas to pick up Kylah and to see Joe's family.

We headed over to see Joe's Grandma (GG) Saturday morning. The kids loved her and loved playing with her toys.

Norah was especially cuddly with GG.

Later on Saturday we celebrated Bella's birthday. The kids loved this Hot Potato Pig game that Bella got. I love seeing all of these cousins together!

They loved doing this "pinata" too!

Norah and Grammy bonded by listening to the Ipod together. :)

And Grammy helped the kiddos to calm down later that night before bed by telling them a story. How cute!

We had a great time Saturday night hanging out with Josh and Val. There's always lots of laughter when we're with them! :)

Sunday morning we headed up to Nebraska...

Another one bites the dust...

Well, Katie and Val warned me that they were having problems with their blogs. Apparently Blogspot is telling quite a few bloggers that they have met their quota for uploading pictures. I could pay a monthly fee to continue to use Blogspot and be able to upload more pictures, but I'm too cheap to do that (even though it isn't very expensive). So, I have officially switched my blog over to a WordPress blog. It has all of my old posts (thankfully!), so you can still see anything you want to. It's taking me a while to get used to the new site, but I think I will like it.

One good thing about me switching my blog is that I can update my website name...

My new blog is now https://arkansasmanthes.wordpress.com. Enjoy!

to Grandpa's house she goes

 Joe's dad was here finishing up the final plumbing things for the Adair house today. He took Kylah back with him to Kansas for the week. She was so excited when we told her she was getting to go.

And she was even more excited that she got to sit in front with Grandpa in his work van (since there's no air bags...)

 We had Bible Study at church tonight, and when we got home, Norah walked around the house yelling, "Lylah! Lylah!" She wanted to know where her sister was! :)

But, Joey distracted her and soon they were happily playing together.

Joe's dad called to let us know they had made it. I talked to Kylah, and she was most excited to tell me that Grandpa took her to McDonald's and even got her a Happy Meal. :)

Have a great week, Kylah! (Which we know she will since she is also surrounded by her cousins there.)

fall parties

Last week Kylah had her class Halloween party at her school. It was during a day that I work, but it just happened that I had a break between patients, so I ran over to her preschool for the party. Since she didn't know I was coming, she was so excited to see me. It was worth it all to see her smile! :)

 Friday was Joey's fall party at his school. Somehow I have ended up being the class homeroom mom (long story), so I got to plan the party. It actually turned out really good, and Kylah was there to enjoy the party with us. Thankfully a friend was watching Norah for me. :)  I heard the phrase "hey Joey's mom..." many, many times at that party! :)

Today is (obviously) election day. I hope all of you went out and voted today! I took Kylah and Norah with me this morning to vote, and Kylah actually got to help me push the buttons on the screen to vote! :)

pumpkins, pumpkins, and more pumpkins

 We have had a fun Fall (Halloween) week. I'm not a huge fan of Halloween, so I refuse to to say this whole week has been about Halloween! :)

But, we have done some fun "fall-ish" activities...

Tuesday was Joey's school field trip to the pumpkin patch. Norah went to her babysitter's house, and Kylah got to join us at the pumpkin patch. She had a blast!

 Joey was really sweet to Kylah and took good care of her.

There were so many fun activities at the pumpkin patch: corn maze, hay rack ride, games, hay tunnel, and of course picking the pumpkins!

Of course the kids wanted to carve their pumpkins later that night. I love the pictures of their hands in the "pumpkin guts." :)

They had so much fun, and they were good about getting every last pumpkin seed out of those pumpkins.

Norah, of course, joined us in cleaning out the pumpkins. She had a front and center spot in the middle of the table. :)

I drew the faces, and then Joe carved them out. The kids were enthralled.

The finished product. We don't claim to be very artistic. :)  And luckily Norah has no clue that we didn't carve an actual pumpkin for her! 

Last night we dressed up the kids and met the Adair's at a church in Bella Vista for some trick or treating. The church had lots of candy, a cardboard box maze, and free pony rides. This is the best picture I got of all the kids, but it's still pretty sweet.

How cute are my little Snow Whites?!

The littlest Snow White was pretty attached to her Uncle Dave last night. It was pretty cute.

The baseball player and the boxer. (Thanks, Nana, for all the Halloween costumes!)

Matty and Norah were pretty cute together. He kept his arm around her even after we were done taking pictures.

Love the beautiful queen and the pretty princess! (And thanks to Gramma for the glow necklaces...the kids loved them!)

The pony rides were a hit. Usually pony rides are at least $5 per person so we never let the kids ride. 

Kylah was so brave and loved it!

Norah wouldn't even get on the pony. She's pretty brave in most things, but I guess she draws the line at live animals.

We headed back to our house and let the older kids trick or treat at a few houses in our neighborhood while Mere and I stayed inside with the little ones.  The kids had way too much sugar, and I think we have at least 15 pounds of candy now, but it was a fun night! :)