Thanksgiving 2015

This year we started a thankful pumpkin, and we're all adding what we are thankful for on our pumpkin!

This year year we also decided to raise our own turkeys. We had three, which we named Christmas, Thanksving, and Justin Case. Justin Case died one day while were were away from home. We're not sure what happened, but it looked as if he got his foot caught in the fence of the coop, and struggled to death trying to set himself free.

We butchered the turkeys ourselves the weekend before Thanksgiving with the help of Uncle Mike. The turkeys weighed only 10 lbs each before the slaughter. For Thanksgiving we sliced the breast meat, battered and fried them into turkey fingers, and they were delicious! 

We celebrated Thanksgiving at my parents house with my sister and her family, Grandma, who came in from SC, Granny Ann and Bobby, Uncle Mike and Debra, and Jody.

Halloween 2015

Our church put on a Halloween fall festival inside the church's gym the weekend before Halloween. My sister was away on a cruise to Mexico with her husband for their 5 year wedding anniversary, so I was able to keep her kids that weekend. We dressed the 6 kids up in their costumes and the kids had a great time.

Dorothy (Skylar), Baby lion (Ashlynne), Woody (Mason), Marine (Gage), Buzz Lightyear (Jojo), Ghost Buster (Maddox).

Stage fright!

The morning before Halloween my mom was able to pick up my sister's kids, she would keep them until my sister returned from her trip. That night our SC friends came in to visit! They would spend Halloween with us! These friends were Skylar and Maddox's best friends from SC. Our friends are also foster parents, and they were able to bring their foster daughter along with them! I'm not however allowed to share her picture at this time.

Karen and Chris

Liam, Maddox, Gabe, Jojo, Mason, Gloria, Cadence, and Skylar

I had so much fun with our friends, and I was so glad that they were able to visit! Unfortunately I feel like the visit was cursed with back luck! The week before our friends arrived, our home was infested with fleas! We sprayed and bombed, but that wasn't enough. We even kicked the dogs out, making them outside dogs. We had hoped to get rid of the fleas before our friends arrived, but we weren't so lucky! I was humiliated that the kids complained of flea bites! Our friends were good sports about it all, and hopefully understanding, but that doesn't take away my embarrassment. To add insult to injury, I had decided to clean our coffee maker with vinegar before our friends arrived, and the vinegar was still inside the keurig. Our coffee was sour and ruined that weekend! I was humbled as a host this weekend.

**Update** January 11, 2016

After two months of bombing we have finally rid our house of fleas!! This was such a frustrating experience.

Calhoun Field Trip

Our homeschool group organized a field trip to Calhoun Produce and my sister and her kids were able to join us! In the spring Calhouns offers a pick your own strawberry patch, but in the fall they have a very large corn maze to get lost in.

look at the alligator!

We separated into groups for the corn maze, Jessica and I, along with the 4 babies were in a group with Skylar, Maddox, other big kids their moms, but the babies were moving too slow, and we let the rest of the group move on without us. We were enjoying ourselves until we realized that we were lost and the babies started melting down because they were tired! I'm not sure how long our group waited for us to get out, but when we finally emerged from the corn field we were told that they were thinking of sending out a search and rescue lol. I'm glad we made it out, and though the babies were getting tired we still had a lot of fun exploring.

The field trip ended with Calhoun's pig races.

Pumpkin Season and Halloween

We had plenty of pumpkin activities this past pumpkin season to keep us busy and happy.

Our homeschool group took a field trip to a local pumpkin patch, Mark's Melon Patch. We enjoyed a hayride and picking out a few pumpkins for our front porch.

Also, my mom and I had fun painting these fun pumpkins together! 

On Halloween day my sister, grandma, and I gathered together to paint and carve pumpkins with the kids. The finished pumpkins turned out great!

We celebrated Halloween at my mom's house. Daddy Mitch and papa Ran took Skylar, Maddox, and Mason trick or treating while Jessica, GiGi, grandma, Jojo, Gage, baby Ashlynne and I stayed behind to pass out candy. The kids racked up on enough candy to last them through Valentine's Day, and we all had a good time.

Happy pumpkin season! 

Autumn 2013

We kicked off our Fall by attending Ashville's annual Apple Festival, and then we headed over to Mitch's sister's apple orchard, Justus Orchard to pick apples and berries :)

Below are the kids on a homeschool field trip at Happy Cow

Every year, since Skylar was a baby we have gone to Niven's Farm to pick our pumpkins from their pumpkin patch

These feet are the feet of each of my four children, we completed a Halloween door sign craft

Cute!

Carving pumpkins :)

The pumpkin creations were the kids' idea :)

For Halloween, the big kids just had to be zombies lol, this was the first year that I let them be something scary :( 

Mason was a cute werewolf and Josiah was a lion

Thanksgiving! We celebrated this year at our house with just the 6 of us plus grandma. Unfortunately family was scattered all over this year, but we'll all get together for Christmas. It was a small, yet warm and cozy Thanksgiving holiday, spent with some wonderful people, and we all have so much to be thankful for! Mitch smoked a turkey for the first time this year, and it was delicious!