Turkey, Gifts and B-day!!

Thanksgiving was a blast this year. We had so much fun but it's nice to be home to gear up for christmas. Time to take down the pumpkins and put up the tree! This year was the Staheli's year for Thanksgiving. There are 27 of us all together, so we went to the church to eat. The kids had a blast running around and making a total mess of the whole church. We ate until we couldn't eat anymore and exchanged gifts. Chad turned 29 on saturday the 28th. He is so lucky that every birthday he gets to be surrounded by family. This was a pretty low key birthday, we need to save ourselves for the big 3-0 next year. Here are the pics!!

Chad and Mike getting ready to blow out the candle on the cheesecake (chad's fav)

Before the gift opening!

Lyndy and Bekah making suckers. We were mass-producing these things

Gracie and Jaime

Roasting dogs with Grandpa

Happy Birthday!!

Of course lots of games were played

My boy

Mmmmm....

Mason and Jake

Jakey

Gracie and Scott

Linda took all of the girls to a jewlery makers house. We got to pick out a neclace for the Lady to make. It was lot's of fun! Gracie and I picked out ours first, so we were killing time.

Lyndy and Linda were SOOO excited!!

Miss Mckay after making her choice

hmmmm... so many choices

We had a white elephant gift exchange after thanksgiving dinner, Lyndy and Travis got the best ones... An autographed picture of Delilah and a pic of Mike and linda... which of course was photoshoped to make them look like old cowboys

We had a family talent show and Chad and Bekah played a christmas song on their trumpets. I love hearing Chad play. He hasn't picked up a trumpet in over 4 years and he did awesome.

Mikey sang "m m m Barak Hussein Obama" ( a song uncle Chan taught him)

the neices played piano

There was lots of coloring

These pics are backwards, but Mikey LOVES baby davis. He kept going over an giving him kisses and hugs and pointing to his face features.. He got a little rough when he was pointing out the nose.....

Kisses better

Gracie with the spoils of her fish pond

Chad and Mike carving the bird

Cute little Aimee and Mike watching a movie

Grace and Jaime on the spinner

The boys playing ball

The day before we left we had a play date with Joshy. Grace loves having friends over. I had to post it because look how cute :)

A dream is a wish come true....

What a fun week we had at the Staheli household. We were able to get out an enjoy the last warm day of the year by re-painting our fence, and also enjoy the first big snow of the year by having a snowball fight! You've gotta love the Utah weather. On Monday, we had an FHE lesson on Adam and Eve and how Adam was given the job to name all of the animals on earth. We decided to take a trip to Cabelas to see some of the animals he named. Mikey is finally at the age where he really enjoys seeing animals. They were so cute!

looking at the peesh (fish)

What is a trip to Cabelas without the chance to shoot something?

Yes, that is my son putting crayons in his ears.

On Saturday, we took Gracie and the boys to see Disney on Ice. I hear all of the time how "magical" it is, but I never thought so until Saturday. I couldn't keep my eyes off of Gracie. Her eyes were as wide as quarters most of the show. When Ariel came out (her favorite) She started yelling and pointing " Mom Ariel is really here! It's really her!!" She was making my eyes water the whole time. It was so cute and well worth the moolah..

She held on to her ticket the whole show

The picture doesn't do it justice. She was mezmerized!

During the show, there was a little girl sitting next to me who had this magic wand that light up. Every time she would push the button to make it light up Gracie would just watch her. She would wisper little things to me ever time like "mom, it has Ariel on it" or "mom there is a princess crown on top" What made it special was she never once asked if she could have one. She just stared in envy at the little girl. I wispered to Chad maybe we should snag one for a christmas present. He said " she needs one for the show" So he got up to go buy her one. Right when he sat down I told Grace to look at what dad had and she ran over and gave him the biggest hug I had ever seen. I don't think she has put it down since we bought it.

The gloves... ohhh the gloves. We bought these at the dollar store on Saturday and Mike WILL NOT take them off. He loves them. If I take them off and we can't find them again he is perfectly content wearing his sisters pink ones. Like he did for church on sunday.