Thanksgiving week!

Man Thanksgiving came and went so quickly! We had a wonderful time! We got to have the kids all to ourselves the whole week and I was so glad to have them home! We had a busy week. A couple days before school let out Cavin had his Thanksgiving play. The Kindergarten class put on a little performance and Cavin was an indian boy. He was pretty excited. 

Grandma Speers came over to watch and have lunch with him and he was so glad to see her.

Our little Indian boy! He did a great job remembering his songs and lines. It was simple but sweet.

On Saturday Cavin's soccer game got cancelled and he was bummed so we asked what he wanted to do and he said he wanted to make ginger bread houses, so we did!

Cavin and Ragnar's house against the girls!

They were excited and Channing just wanted to eat the candy!

Took some work getting the walls up :)

Boys was on the left and girls was on the right!

Silly kiddos!

Then we set up the Christmas decorations because we are leaving so early for Germany that I wanted them to be up for more than 2 weeks! So the kids had fun decoration the tree!

The tree fun!

Jingles the elf came to visit our house as well!
The week of Thanksgiving on Monday we went over to my best friend Stacey's house and the kids played with her children and they had a great time. On Tuesday we went down to the Toyota Center to watch the movie "Free Birds" on the big screen. I guess Dwight Howard on the Rockets is a turkey voice or something in the movie so he got permission to show the movie on the big screen to the employees families and to a couple children's charities. The kids loved having the players right by them and Cavin was excited to high five his favorite player...the beard man...James Hardin.(even though the picture below is of my favorite...Dwight Howard)

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If you haven't seen the movie, it's probably worth a red box rental, but the kids had fun with candy and endless popcorn!
On Wednesday we went' back to the Toyota Center for the actual Rockets game. My parents and sister joined us which was a treat! We were able to get into a suite so we had a nice time and Cavin enjoy flirting with a little girl from his class in the next suite over. Silly kid!

Then Thursday was the Turkey Football game which Ragnar played in and then Thanksgiving! My mother cooked a nice meal as usual and we stayed with them for a few days. The kids enjoy going out on their new back patio. We roasted marshmallows and made smores and then my mom and I braved a little bit of "black Friday" shopping. Target was great and the line was short but Kohl's we waited in line a while! It was fun to chat with my mom though...our backs only slightly hurt from standing ;)
Friday we got to take Ella to the Nutcracker ballet performance. We have made it a tradition for the girls to go and Ella really looks forward to it. Natalie, Mom, Ella, and I went and my dad was kind enough to watch Cavin and Channing while Ragnar was working. We ate dinner and went downtown! 

Grandma, Natalie, and Ella

Our Ballerina!

We had a good time even though Ella and I have allergies because the weather goes from 80 degrees to 40 degrees and back, but we still enjoyed our time!
Saturday Ragnar and I got to see the movie "Catching Fire" which we enjoyed and then that night he performed in "The Messiah" performance that our stake put on and I wish I would have gotten a picture. He played his cello and did a great job. The kids had fun watching him play!!! We had a wonderful week and have SO MUCH to be thankful for!

Halloween Day 2013

This year the week of Halloween was so wet!! It had been raining all day so we were pretty sure that we wouldn't be able to go trick or treating. Then, a couple hours before time for trick or treating the rain stopped and we got to go. The kids were pretty excited!

Here is our little Dorothy. She had Toto in her basket ;)

Here is Ella as Ella the Rose Fairy from her favorite "Rainbow Magic" books. She is CONSTANTLY reading them and there are tons of them in the series.

Beautiful girl!!

Our SpiderMan here to save us!

Here are the cuties ready to go trick or treating!!

My sister Natalie and my mom came and spent the afternoon with us and endured the trick or treating fun! Thanks!

We walked around the neighborhood with our neighbor Katie who is Ella's friend. They had a good time...and as you can see in the back of the picture...Cavin was enjoying himself too ;)

Channing LOVED trick or treating. She kept saying we have to keep going, time to trick or treat.

And here is Ella dancing and celebrating her bucket of candy! A happy Halloween it was!

October Fun!

We had a nice Halloween this year. We spent the Saturday before Halloween celebrating with Ragnar at the Toyota Center. The kids were excited to trick or treat the suites at the Toyota Center and then even more excited to be able to hand out candy afterwards to the other kids.

This year Ella and Cavin really wanted to choose what they were and didn't want to do a family theme, so Cavin was SpiderMan, Ella was Ella the Rose Fairy (from the Rainbow Magic books that she is obsessed with), and Channing is Dorothy :)

Monday night for Family Home Evening we carved/decorated pumpkins.

Channing just painted her pumpkin and Ella and Cavin wanted to carve AND paint theirs.

Of course I got the lovely job of cleaning out the pumpkins :/

Paint was getting everywhere...so off went the shirt!

Can you guess who this is? ;)

Here are our silly pumpkins....we are no professionals..but the kids have fun. Ella's is the blue one with the eyelashes, Cavin's is the jackolantern and Channing's the painted one behind. So fun!

This is how we spend our Saturdays!!!

This is how we are spending our Saturday's. It's fun to watch Cavin play. He is getting better and a little more confident. Nothing else is going on besides Ragnar's season is about to ramp up.

Fall Soccer

Tis the season! Soccer has begun again and Cavin could hardly wait! He did Spring soccer and loved it so we signed him up again with most of the boys on his team for Fall soccer. He loves it so much! This year his team is the Blue Ninjas and he was lucky enough to get to wear his lucky #8 jersey again.

Here he is before his first game of the season!

He scored his first goal of the season! So far he has one for each of the first two games.

Without fail each game has a couple plays that end like this...mostly with a pile up in response to Cavins clumsiness!

Ragnar got a new camera, so he took a million pictures, but here are just a few. He loves soccer and I am glad he does. It sure does make his father's heart happy!

Family Pictures 2013

This summer we went to Utah for a family reunion and my sweet cousin Ang took pictures of our family for us. When we got them back I got some printed, but realized for blogging purposes, I never posted them, so here are some of my favorites!

Here we are all together! Speers Family clan!

A nearly impossible attempt at getting grandparents with grandchildren!

Mom and Dad

My older sister Natalie.

My brother Corey and his family.

My other brother Chris and his family.

My little sister Marisa and her family.

And of course, some of my favorites of our family! We are so lucky to have a wonderful family on Ragnar's side and mine!