Thanksgiving Weekend!!

The 4 day weekend has been such a good weekend of family and friends!! The tradition has been going for some time that my mom comes over in the morning and takes over my kitchen!! :)




Food Coma :)...although I don't even think we had eaten yet when this was taken!!


These 2 harassed each other all day!!


Craig doing his traditional "Carving the Turkey"!! (Which I don't think he enjoys at all)


Codi and Emily


Cousins :)


This year for Black Friday--We tried a new plan with the Mall opening at Midnight---Kelsey, her sister Courtney, and I thought we would try it!! We took Carli with us---she was SOOOOOO excited!! Unfortunately we learned our lesson to just stick to the early morning Target/Walmart...the mall was full of teenagers (did their parents even know where they were????)...we went back home..slept from 2-4:30 and then headed to Target.


Waiting outside the Mall for it to open.


We hung out at the Putz house on Friday...the kids did a "painting with pudding" activity...


Friday evening we loading all the kids up on the rangers to have a camp fire. The guys built a great fire (minus JJ losing the hair on his arms during the actual "Ignition")


All the kids


The big Kids :)


It was a perfect evening :)

Controlling the hormones!!!

I know that people say "where has the time gone" all the time...but seriously...especially with Carli..she has become such a young adult in the last month or so...Along with the growing up so fast comes the transition "attitude"...I'm not sure if attitude is the correct word...but she is very expressive lately.

Which leads me to the best discipline strategy!!!...I am a genius!!...It took me a long time to give in to the whole cell phone idea for her...I work around 15 year girls all day..I have seen the bad choices they make with their cell phones. A couple of weeks ago a parent at Carli's school was thanking me for have such a wonderful daughter...to make a long story short...This parent's daughter has special needs and for the last 3 years Carli has been really good with her in classes..teachers have intentionally kept them in same groups knowing Carli would help out...Instantly I was reminded what a good kid she is and felt compelled to go buy her a phone.

...back to me (or Craig and I to keep it fair) being a genius...We now have a wonderful little piece of technology to dangle over her potentially sassy/moody/rotten 13 year old. :))


Yesterday we took some pictures at Cassie's wedding shower...standing next to her I realized she is quickly catching me!!!

Not our Traditional Halloween!! :(

It has been too long since I have taken the time to post some pictures and happenings going on in our life!! Things have been pretty busy...and with this past weekend of club tryouts...it is about to get busier!!!

Our normal Halloween tradition had to take a year off :( I had a tournament all day in Tucson, my cousin having a 40th birthday party, AND the girls having club tryouts very early Sunday morning forced us to postpone our normal Halloween gathering until next year!!! Craig and my mom got the girls ready in their costumes and they drove to the Dallmanns to hang out and trick or treat with them. Carli was a Hippie and Codi was a punk rocker :)