Thanksgiving

We had a relatively quite Thanksgiving this year, but it was still wonderful to be able to spend time with family.  Everyone in the immediate family (minus Todd and Tanner) was here.  And we finally got to meet Jill's (then) fiance Aaron (they just got married this past weekend).

Ann loved having her cousin Kaybri here to play with. They were wearing socks on their hands to keep them warm.

Kaybri tried riding Ann's tricycle

David and Tom spent some time cleaning up the old super Nintendo controllers

Tom had gotten the super Nintendo working again for Ann to play with

Looking up recipes

Ian got to play with the newest Polley cousin, Kinley

Helping out in the kitchen

Ann and Kreed

Turkey time! 

Notice the baby bow in her hair - the things we moms do

That nose knows what she wants...

Getting ready to eat! 

More cousin and trampoline time

They had a lot of fun together, and now that they are a little older, they got along better too

Daisy's treat time

They shuttled rocks to the table with Ann's tricycle for their "picnic"

The sole purpose of this picture is to show how close Ian and Kaybri are in height - Ian is almost exactly 2 years younger than Kaybri.

Springs Preserve

The week before Thanksgiving, Ann's preschool class took a field trip to a place called Springs Preserve (a nature/historical sort of place).  We first participated in their weekly "toddler time", which is for kids ages 2-5.  It seems to usually consist of a story and then making a craft.  After that and having snacks, families were able to go off and explore wherever we wanted.  I took Ann and Ian down to look at the botanical gardens (which I'm sure would be more interesting when things are more in bloom).  After that we went home since it was lunch and nap time.

Since it was Thanksgiving time, the book they read was "Ten Fat Turkeys", and the craft was making a pine cone turkey.

Ian had fun pushing chairs around while Ann made her turkey

There was this little puppet stage that Ann was really interested in and had fun playing around for a bit.

Hanging out in the stroller

While I was taking this picture, Ann was telling me to stop taking pictures of her (she was getting a little tired and cranky at this point).

There were still a few flowers left around that were pretty (but not many)

In front of the pretty red berries on a bush

We took this picture with the big Christmas tree that was up.  It was a really sunny day so Ann wanted to stand in the shade, which unfortunately there wasn't a ton of room on that side, so I didn't get much of the tree in the picture.  Oh well.

Around the Backyard

One of the biggest pluses about living in the desert is that the weather is generally quite nice throughout the fall and winter.  One day Ann and Ian were both wearing shirts with owls on them.  Since they looked so cute, I decided to take them outside to take some pictures together and just play around a bit.

Of course, at least with my kids, getting them to sit still and smile can take a bit of effort.

They are both looking at the camera and smiling!

My sweet girl

These two can play so sweetly together (note: can, unfortunately not always, but it's really sweet when it does happen)

My adorable little boy

Checking out the fire pit (she told me, "don't worry, I won't fall in")

What big sister checks out, little brother must come and check out as well.

Halloween

Yeah, so Christmas is just over a week away and I'm just now finally getting around to posting about Halloween.  That's kind of what happens when one is not usually able to get to the computer to work on and then post pictures.  Oh well...

This was Ann just before heading off to her Halloween party at preschool.  She decided months ago that she wanted to be a mouse for Halloween (I think Tom or I jokingly suggested it due to her love of cheese and she completely latched onto the idea).  With the help of Tom's parents, we made her "cheese" (it's painted foam).

Our little ghost getting ready to head off to our church Halloween party (which was the same day as Ann's preschool party).

Our church party consisted of dinner, games and a trunk-or-treat.

My wonderful (and goofy) in-laws :)

On Halloween Day, Ann, Ian and I went with Tom's parents down to a place called Bonnie Springs.  It has a little petting zoo there.  Ann went back and forth about how she felt about these animals walking around her.

Some animals were in cages, others were roaming free (the ones out roaming were animals like sheep, deer, and donkeys).

That is one crazy looking chicken.

Unfortunately I didn't get the settings on the camera changed quick enough for this picture, but Ann was petting this huge tortoise (pictured below) that was wandering around. 

This guy moved rather quickly.  The zoo keepers said he's actually an African tortoise, so not native to Nevada, and that he was about 20-30 years old.

There was a little train ride there which Ann definitely wanted to ride on.

Ian and I came along too.  Grandma stayed behind with the stroller.

She quite enjoyed herself.

The beautiful desert scenery.

Me and Ian on our ride.  I think he was upset because I wasn't letting him off the seat to crawl around while the train was moving (I know, I'm so mean :)

Time to get ready for trick-or-treating!  She was super excited.

We walked around part of the neighborhood and Ann got quite a good amount of candy.  I just pushed Ian in the stroller, and he ended up falling asleep near the end.  All in all, we had a good holiday.