We were lucky enough to be able to host Thanksgiving for all of our Johnson family this year. As an added bonus, we had Emma and Graham for a week before everyone else arrived. Daxton loved having friends around the house to play with all day long. I thought we'd be adventurous and do all sorts of fun activities, but I forgot just how tiring a one-year-old can be, and the wrench in the day that is naptime. Instead we satisfied ourselves with a lot of bike rides around the neighborhood. We hit up a couple of parks too.
Playing with slime was the biggest hit.
The girls adored Graham!
I think he was putting on a finger show with his bread. It was pretty cute.
Bike rides galore. Poor Emma had a hard time keeping up with speedy Daxton.
I barely had enough room for all the kids when we needed to run somewhere.
Unfortunately we were hit with some bitter cold weather and more than a foot of snow. If anything throws a kink into outdoor fun, it's a foot of snow and no snow clothes to go out and play.
Trying to jump on the tramp with ice falling is a slippery job.
Just a few hours later...and the snow was still falling. We ended up with 14 inches at our house!
Emma and Graham were able to go to Daxton's fall festival at school. I think Emma really wishes she was down there singing with the kids. Graham was just ready for his nap!
Cutest little turkey ever!
Jeremy and I needed to take a trip to Costco before the rest of the crew arrived, and that was rather humorous. Do you realize how difficult it is to fit three kids in a cart and a bunch of food? I knew, but like everything else, I had forgotten!
I feel really bad that everyone who was traveling ran into yucky weather. Camille and Jake were stuck an extra day in Fort Lauderdale. The Johnsons driving from Utah needed to go south to avoid I-80, and still had to spend the night in Green River. Every one of our guests, minus my mom and dad, were a day late arriving. Once they were here though the kids went wild. They were so excited to see each other. My boys didn't wait long at all before showing their cousins their favorite game at our new house, jumping off of the ledge. I laughed when Hannah said she had her fingers crossed that Sam would break his arm. Apparently she needs that kid to slow down a bit!
On Wednesday the ladies spent all day in the kitchen prepping pies. It was so much fun baking with those ladies.
While we baked, Jeremy took the kids outside. He and Jake had come up with a great plan to pull sleds up and down our street. The plows never came through this storm so there was plenty of ice and snow for these kids to enjoy. I hopped on for a ride and it was fun! It felt a lot like tubing except you fall onto rock hard concrete and ice instead of water.
Thursday morning we started our day with our own family turkey trot. My mom and Camille made these great medals to give to each of the participants, and with each lap they completed around the peanut (or the small kid loop), they earned another charm.
Cambrie ended up running a 5k that morning and Kelton and McKenzie made it about half that. It was a chilly and there were definitely some slick spots, but it looked like everyone was having fun.
My dad passed out the medals to all of the runners.
Back at home it was time to start prepping dinner. The kids ran around and played while the women baked. Thank you Ryan for the wrestling session!
I admit that I was really worried about my kitchen not behaving for the cooking, but it did a great job. Somehow we managed to pull together an amazing feast. There was obviously way too much food for us to eat, but that's a classic Thanksgiving move right there.
Each of the kids had the supplies to make an turkey feather headband, and each kid had a cracker sitting at their plate with a arcing turkey in it. Those turkeys were hilarious to watch scoot across the floor.
Once dinner was cleaned up we pulled out the pies. The kids had all disappeared to play, so the moms helped themselves to some pie. We called it "quite pie." It was silent and it was beautiful. Slowly the kids started finding us, and they were only allowed a piece of pie if they participated in the quite pie game. When Daxton found the pie table my mom was the only one sitting there. He thought she had eaten all of the pie by herself!
After quiet pie the women decided to take a hard earned break and went out to the movies. We ended up watching "Knives Out" which was pretty entertaining. The guys had already gone to an archery range the day before so we didn't feel guilty at all about a girls' outing.
The Thurstons and my dad all headed home on Friday before another storm hit. Big hugs as they walked out the door.
The Johnsons were able to stay and play though. We took them to Defy which is our favorite trampoline park. All of the adults had wrist bands too so we were flipping, climbing, jumping, and running around as much as the kids. None of us could walk well the next day!
As we were out and about, the boys had to rescue a stranded car who has slipped on the ice. I was filled with all sorts of happy feelings watching those guys help out.
All throughout the month Kelton has been making turkeys.
I told him he could make as many as he wanted and could hang them up on the door, but none of them could be the same. We had a couple of additions from his sisters and Daxton, but he was the turkey king this year. I loved seeing his whole wall of dizzy turkeys.
The 3D versions
The whole crew headed home on Sunday morning. We were sad to see them go and our house was shockingly quiet after hosting guests for two weeks. We are very grateful to have such an amazing family.
