Thursday, December 5, 2013

THANKSGIVING

thanksgiving was wonderful.
we had the fullest house i think our house can handle.
and actually our house didn't handle it, my saintly neighbor let us use her house while they were gone and it was the saving grace of our thanksgiving weekend.
2 bathrooms, 2 fridges, 2 ovens, 4 bedrooms, 2 living rooms, 2 sets of baking dishes, 2 bread machines, and all the suitcase mess next door where we weren't all gathering constantly.
THANK YOU KATIE!

now onto thanksgiving!

pre-thanksgiving morning, i made pancake batter and tayli cooked all the pancakes
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a. grandpa rocked it all weekend by entertaining the little ones while we cooked.
b. our thanksgiving outline/shopping list. they were gone for almost 2 hours shopping for food and other little things. i got to stay home while maxson slept. funny miscommunication: i wrote down 15 bananas on the shopping list, 2 people picked up bananas, so we had thirty bananas, crazy thing, we ate them all!
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thanksgiving eve we made 3 homemade pizzas, and they were TASTY!
by far the best one was the chicken caesar salad pizza, it's like a copycat of one i've had in arizona at sauce and it was MARVELOUS. most definitely everyones favorite.
we also made the cheesiest of pepperoni pizza and, not surprisingly, a hawaiian one.
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a. maxson and jaden had matching pj's!
b. karlee was a doll and did tons of dishes thanksgiving morning while lots of cooking and dirty dish making was going on.
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grandpa entertaining those wee ones. we all love him
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kimber, tayli, camille
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a. casey cut his first turkey! (with the expert father overseeing) man those electric knives are bomb.
b. so many gloriously yummy side dishes. (best part of hosting thanksgiving, i get the left overs!!!!)
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derek, cody, camille, brielle, tayli, maxson, karlee
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i convinced tayli to sport my red lipstick all weekend.
sure looked good on her!
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pumpkin pie making
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our thanksgiving dinner in our tiniest of little places.
the memory of being squished in our home for thanksgiving will forever live.
(ps- how do people do real plates for thanksgiving? uh, paper all the way over here folks)
i should probably invest in some nice table cloths...
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our first family of 3 thanksgiving. maxson downed all the food, he's like an endless eating tank.
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more beautiful people at our thanksgiving table
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the cody cutler family
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post thanksgiving: everyone deciding they should be in the kitchen at once for various reasons.
even the 3 children are in this room i believe.
you could pretty much only move inches!
ha, what a joke, and cody is trying to open the fridge on top of it all, good luck with that.
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exceptional car driving skills by the youngins
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maxson took a nap on brad the dad aka grandpa, it was so sweet.
soon after this picture brad fell asleep himself and it was just tender.
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we were lucky enough to get some warm days while everyone was here and played outside a few times.
these kiddos love to swing and slide!
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mr. jaden and mr. maximus
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gearing up for family pictures (for another post)
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a. all weekend maxson would walk up to people in the kitchen, raise his arms up at them asking them to pick him up, so cute.
he just wanted to be involved and see what was going on and i loved watching him fearlessly love these new people.
maxson had just woken up from a nap and although he was groggy, made the choice to be happy since he could watch/help grandpa wash dishes.
isn't his bed-head hair stellar?
b. getting some christmas lights out brought sheer amusement to maxson.
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post thanksgiving evening pie hangover
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thanksgiving night we played a myriad of fun silly games.
the animal sound game (everyone was laughing so hard during this game)
can you pass the roll spoon game
and actual spoons.
i've decided i was meant to marry into the cutler family for they are the prefect group to satisfy my desires for constant family game playing.
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other events not pictured: the boys played basketball at the church for 2 hours thanksgiving morning and another 2 hours of football after that, they were sore to say the least.

it really was a most splendid weekend.
everyone helped out so much with cooking, cleaning, and baby caring.
we love out cutler family!!!!!!

3 comments:

Christian, Kerri, & The Boys said...

YAY! Fun pics! Great hosts. Yummy food.

BTW, I love red lipstick!

Cody and Camille said...

Best Thanksgiving EVER!!!!! We had such a wonderful time and will forever remember all the fun memories!

Andy Ballstaedt said...

You dress Maxson in the cutest clothes. Where do you get them? Also i'm not sure which post it was but the black and white smoothie pic is so so cute. like symbolic or something haha