A Super Fun Thanksgiving!!!

          Thanksgiving this year was extra special!! First and foremost, we had family in town for Thanksgiving for the first time since we moved from Utah! We went to New York one year and had Thanksgiving with family...but other than that we have done the holiday alone.  So, It was very fun to have my mom and Brother, his wife and three boys with us! We had a full house but it was such a blast!!  Second, I got to cook a full Thanksgiving dinner in my new, beautiful kitchen! I LOVED it :)

           I had some fun activities planned for the kids to keep them entertained.  The far and away favorite was the airplanes.  The kids got to decorate and put together their planes. Then we spent hours outside playing with them :)

 The trampoline was a favorite as well! The kids loved when Jar played with them on the trampoline!! He showed them some pretty awesome wrestling moves and throws... :)

 Every night, each of the kids would pick book to read to Grammy!! This was the favorite time of the night!! What a wonderful Grammy these lucky kids have!!

On Thanksgiving, the kids entertained themselves while they waited for dinner by scratching off designs on these fall leaves then  hanging them up as decorations.

 Braden, Ashton and especially Tyson were all very sweet with Elsie!

It was fun to have Jared here. I haven't seen him in so long and have missed his craziness :) He is just a fun guy!!

 I think we went through hundreds of pieces of paper as the kids made paper planes and balloons and all sorts of pictures!!

We spent a lot of time on the Knect!! Literally hours were spent dancing!!!

 

 I loved when Jared and Heather did a couples dance...they really rocked it!!

 Every night we read scriptures together!! It will always be a nice memory for me :)

 More and more dancing...literally hours!!!!

 Ryan and I even did a few dances together.   Ryan was a champ and even did one with Elsie in his arms!

 Thanksgiving dinner could not have gone any smoother...thank heaven!!

 The kids all ate their dinner reasonably well.

I personally, thought all the food was delicious!!

 And that's not just because I busted my butt making it- heheh!

 Everyone pitched in when they had a chance to!

 A special moment was when Braden and Ashton both wanted me to teach them to play a song on the piano! They were both very good!!

 And the kids all loved the night we did mad libs!!  These kids are easy to please and they all thought it was super funny!!

We hated to say goodbye :( but were so grateful Jared and Heather  and the boys made the long trip to spend Thanksgiving with us!!

For our last night with Grammy, we went to our favorite pizza place!!! We love Grammy and were devastated to let her leave.  What a fabulous memory this Thanksgiving will always be for me!!

The Dick Family always loves the holidays and decorated as soon as possible!! And this year we had our very own house to doll up for Christmas!! Our front porch looks amazing...even better during the day if you ask me. Cause then you can see the ornaments we have all over those trees and garland!! But the twirly sparkle lights Ryan got are pretty fun!!

I jut had to throw this darling picture of Elsie in here. We went to a Christmas breakfast on base and the kids each got a present from santa!! This was Elsie's actual face the moment she opened her present and got a lion stuffed animal bigger than she was!! So cute!! I just love the holidays!!

Happy Birthday Beckham!!

Our Beckham is 6!!! He was my baby for so long, so having him turn 6 makes me particularly sad :( However, of course, I am very happy, too! It has been so fun to see him grow and become his own unique little person.  He is so inquisitive and curious about how things work and how things are made. We tell him he's going to be a mechanical engineer because that is just how his mind seems to work!! He has the kindest heart and loves to make people happy. He is passionate and his highs are high and his lows are very low. But, he has a very goofy personality and has an explanation for everything!! We sure love him!!

For his Birthday, Beckham wanted an Odd Squad theme!! I had a lot of fun with this.  To go along with the theme, here are Beckham's cupcakes which were hairy monsters!!!

I made an Odd Squad Headquarters Crest as decoration!!  It turned out cute...even though it is hard to see :)

 To start, Jane and Beckham had to complete a training course in order to become as Odd Squad agent and get a badge!! The course started with a lazer course.

Here is another view of the course...

 Here are Jane and Beckham getting their instructions before beginning the training course- hehe!!

 They had a lot of fun with the course

 Meanwhile, Elsie had a cupcake to keep her occupied :)

 The next step in the training course was the balance beam. If they fell, they got burned by lava...ooooh.

 The next step was to step on the plates with the right symbol on them to get across. If they stepped on the wrong plates they got hit with boobie traps-hehehe!

 Last, they had to make it up the mountain, without getting hit by the green grenades falling down it.

 Once they completed the training course, they had some "Odd" missions to complete. The first mission was to collect all the centigurps that had escaped their holding tank...

 There were 25 of them and they found them all super fast! They are expert Odd Squad agents :)

 The next mission was to fix all the animals that the villain, Flat-em,  had flattened...

 They had to put the puzzles together to release the poor animal that went along with it!

 The next mission was to correctly guess how many jelly beans were in the jar or the villain, Jelly Bean Joe, would cover our house in pudding... Elsie loved this mission a lot!!

 The next mission was to shoot all the monsters that had escaped with tranquilizer guns :)

 They took their job very seriously...

 After completing all the missions, we had a few friends come over to have the monster cupcakes with us!!

 And open presents...Beckham had been waiting patiently all day for this and was super excited!

 We had a fabulous time celebrating Beckham turning 6 and were all totally pooped by the end of the day!! We love our only boy, Beckham!! What a special kid he is!

 Here is just a fun picture of the kids at the Mizzou vs BYU game with Ryan!! We are bug BYU fans in this house!! Too bad they lost this game...but they still had a blast!!