Thanksgiving Craft Lady

My aunt asked me to come up with some crafts this year for Thanksgiving.  I jumped at the opportunity!  Crafting with a group of kids is my comfort zone!  The kids absolutely loved when they saw me headed to the craft area and setting up for another craft and I loved getting to know all of them better.

I set out coloring pages and a fun Ed Emberly book at one in the of the table, for whenever.  

Our first craft was a snowman.  First we painted his body.  Shawn was a big help to me!

After the paint dried, the kids picked out scarves and earmuffs and we hot glued them on.  The last thing they needed to do was draw a face on the snowman.  Of course we signed and dated them. 

I thought they turned out SO cute!!!

After lunch, we made Christmas trees from popsicle sticks and sequins and buttons.  Again, it was super easy and I think they are so stinkin cute!

As the sun went down, we completed our last craft together.  We made doily snowmen.

Here's all my little crafters with their creations!

Now we are home and all the preparation for Thanksgiving is over.  Most of my Christmas list is complete so I hope and pray that the month of December is full of happy moments and good memories!

Thanksgiving Part 3; Marshall, Texas

We first went to camp Bee 2 years ago in 2013 for Thanksgiving.  We all loved it and decided to make it a family reunion of sorts.  This year was great because I got to see cousins that I haven't seen since probably the 90's!  Of course I've seen them on Facebook, but in person is much better!  Also there were new babies to welcome and snuggle and hog and such.  Oh and crafting, fun crafting with 9 eager kiddos!

My grandma likes to defy what people say about age....she is a great example to me of growing old and not necessarily growing up!  (in a good way!) She tried riding one of the cousins trick bikes.  She didn't get too far.

Elle, Ava and I played tug o' war with my brother's baby for most of the time.  He just switched arms from one to the other.  We are all three in love.  I miss him terribly already.

My cousin also adopted this cutie and this was our first time to meet her.  We are all very much in love with her too!!!  I'm thankful that Elle and Ava love babies so much!  :)

Cousins playing games 

Our group!  I think only 3 were missing from the group...my sister's youngest got sick and they stayed home.  :(  Bummer!!

Gathering around the table before we eat....there was a little of everything!  Buffet is one of my love languages.

I think I was the only person to take a picture of my plate.  But I couldn't resist...I was just so excited about all the things I loved, being on one plate! (My dessert plate was almost as impressive, but I didn't have the patience to go get my camera and take a picture before digging into that one!)

After lunch, to ward off the afternoon coma, some of us headed out to the pasture to shoot guns.  I love to shoot guns.  It was so hard not to hog the guns and cut in line.  Here's my memaw at it again with a pistol of some sorts. 

Ear protection!

If this picture doesn't scream manliness, then nothing does!!!

And this one is pretty cute too...I really expected Levi not to like shooting the gun but he did. :)

Then we moved on to a shotgun.  Memaw showing us how it's done.

Manly woman

New friends...these three got along so well and it just made my heart happy.  This is my cousins daughter and they live in Colorado.

Cousins pretending to drive the golf cart.

More loving on baby Desi.

Thursday morning, Levi kept complaining of a stomach ache.....then puked up breakfast, sipped 7-up till lunch and felt great from then on out!  Now THAT is something to be thankful for!  

Here's a view of our 5 Star accommodations. lol  The five of us slept on 2 double beds and a cot.  It was "cozy."

I'll end with this.  Oh.My.Goodness.  I need him to live closer!!!!!!  His kisses are some of my favorites I've ever gotten!  They are full contact.

Thanksgiving Times Three; Part 1 and 2

We had another wonderful Thanksgiving holiday this year.  We've started meeting my my side of the family every other year at Camp Bee in Marshall, Texas.  Since we had the whole week off, we also were able to spend a few days in Tyler and see Shawn's parents and sister.  There was a lot of catching up and laughing this past week.  I came home full of food and renewed relationships (and a cold front which makes me super happy!)

We spent Monday with Barbara and Shawn's sister and her family. The kids stayed and spent the night which means Shawn and I actually got an "Silent Night."  Tuesday we went to the Brookshire's Museum which was great for all the kids!  We finished the afternoon with Orange Leaf...yuum.

After that we all headed to Paul and Carolyn's house to catch lizards, eat a great meal and just hang out.  The kids all spent the night with them which means we got ANOTHER silent night...which was so needed!  

Wednesday morning, we picked up our kids and made them take a shower. We stopped and ate at our favorite place in Tyler, Bruno's before heading to Camp Bee! 

A Camp IN

This past weekend, Shawn and I were hosting our MASH group and planned a camp out!  We knew that there was a good chance that the weather wouldn't cooperate with us so we had a rain out plan ready to go....and we are glad we did!  We ended up having a Camp In at the church building and it was GREAT!!!  To sum it up, it was all the joys of camping, without extreme temperature issues and dirt.  

Ava brought her own tent and camped in it.  She did allow friends to come visit but she was all by herself when we turned the fire off (more on that later.)

We made hotdogs over firepit under our drive through covered area.

Here are some buddies around the fake fire in the fellowship hall.  IT.LOOKED.REAL.  The only thing missing was heat.  We were pretty proud of what we made!

Kainyn is a popular "toy" with both of my girls...and myself!  :)

After dinner and a few games around the fake campfire, we headed back outside for S'Mores!  

The aftermath of many S'Mores makers getting into all the ingredients.

Then we came back in to play some more fun games.

This picture is so funny to me.  They were trying to roll a 6 on the dice, as fast as they could as part of a game.

We gave all the kids glow bracelets and necklaces, which were a BIG hit.  While they played with these, the adults played pictionary in the dark.  It was quite funny.  We used chalk and a blacklight and still couldn't barely see anything.

Here I am warming my hands by faux fire.  You can see the pictionary game in the background.

After that, we played Shadow Charades and that was a lot of fun.  

The last game we played was Glowing Ring Toss.  It's harder than we thought!  We kept having to move the bottles closer.  It was our last game to play around 10.  Kids were getting cranky and tired by this point so everyone headed to their tents and mats.

After a long night of listening to "bears" outside our tent, a.k.a snoring, we got up and Shawn started making breakfast tacos for everyone.  We tried to keep it as real as could be so we worked by lantern instead of turning the lights on.

While the girls were waiting, they watched the rain coming down from inside.  It was at this point that I was REALLY glad we opted for a camp IN. 

Here's everyone gathered around the "fire" eating breakfast.

Here's a better look at our "fire."  We used our 3 Halloween cauldrons and surrounded them with wood we had.  I even had a sound machine that would make fire noise.  

This event required a lot of preparation, but it turned out so great and I'm so glad we were able to do it!