Turkey Day!

This year for Thanksgiving we stayed in Big Rapids and celebrated with our family away from home. All of our friends stayed here as well so we got together at church and ate and played games. The kids always seem to entertain themselves so well at church...

Running down the halls...
Making funny faces...
Or watching a movie (or climbing the chairs).
We had SOOO much food!!
But it was SOO good!!

Some of our friends...I don't know why it's blurry.

We had a great time playing Apples to Apples and visiting. I'm so thankful for great friends who are like my family while I'm away from mine. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Rock Star Brooke

Brooke had her Primary Program today and she rocked it! She loves to sing (I could show evidence if I could upload a video from our new camera) and sing loud is what she does best. Her leaders have been telling me how great she has been singing during Primary. I wasn't sure if she would sing like that for the real thing because she can be shy in new situations. But she did great! We are so proud of her!

I just realized today that Charlotte will be a Sunbeam in just over a month and will be able to join Brooke in the Primary Program next year! Where does the time go?
Here she is this morning playing with her dollhouse before church. This is her favorite toy and can play with it for hours and hours.

The Holiday Season can now begin

Big Rapids had their annual Holiday Parade tonight. It was only our second time attending but it sure was a great parade. Brooke got to walk in it again with her girl scout troop so we found a good spot to stand and wait for the parade to start.

Charlotte and Nathan enjoyed racing each other across the road.
Charlotte found one of the Dawg's from the Year of the Dawgs.
The parade has started. The first things to drive by were fire trucks and ambulances all decked out.
Nathan liked this UPS truck because of the flames. I wonder where they keep this, because I've never seen it around town. (And it's not that big of a town)
I had to chase down Brooke because we were on the OTHER side of the street. She had fun walking and saw some people from school.
Lots and lots of tractors and floats.



Another bus all decked out.

Santa finished up the parade.

It was a great night. It wasn't even that cold. At least, not as cold as last year. One of the best parades I've seen in a long time.

New Camera

I finally got a new camera. I actually broke mine at Brooke's Halloween party which is the reason there are no pictures of trick or treating. Good thing we had other Halloween festivities where we got their pictures in the Halloween costumes.
So what have we been doing? Well, enjoying the beautiful, fall weather. The temps have been between 50 and 60 degrees. It's been really nice. We've been trying to play outside as much as we can. Last Saturday was really nice weather so we decided to take another trip to the Apple Orchard. The girls had a great time playing on all the toys and seeing the animals. And we got some yummy donuts!! We decided to drive to Grand Rapids after that to see if we could find a camera, which we did at Target. I miss Target. Probably a good thing it's not closer since we don't have much extra money to spend. We ate dinner at Steak-n-Shake, another thing I miss. The girls were so excited to get their shakes! It was like they hadn't eaten in days!
Brooke celebrated her half birthday the other day. She insisted on taking cupcakes with Hannah Montana rings to school. I'm not sure how many more years we will have to celebrate her half birthday. LOL
Here are some pictures with our new camera with some of our friends that live by us.

Charlotte is a little big for this swing, but she loves it. It's a little hard to get her out.

We were watching Kylee the other night and I couldn't help but take some pictures of her cute face.

I took some video's but can't figure out how to post them yet. Maybe we'll figure it out one of these days.