Turkey Days

Not to toot my own horn or anything- but I cooked a turkey for the first time and it was delicious! I know, it shocked me too. I have a healthy disgust for raw poultry and so my friend came over to help me get through it. After a nice butter massage and herbal rub- the cooking part was a piece of cake.

Our friends the Garza's made it a fabulous day filled with food, football, food, black friday ads, music and dance performances, food- but no naps. Next year I want a nap :). Joe played in the ward turkey bowl and for the first time the kids and I made it out to support him. He threw a few touchdown passes and looked great- almost like high school again:).

Christmas Traditions...for beginners

By choice, we are staying home alone for Christmas this year. We will miss our families like crazy but we (i.e. Dawnelle) thought it would be a good idea to establish some traditions and make it a magical season without the stress of travel. I know we are only 2 days into "The Benson 25 Days of Christmas Extravaganza" but I just know that this is going to be the best Christmas season ever! So far the traditions we are establishing have either come from my childhood or from my head but Joe is going to throw some into the mix. He took it pretty hard when his 25 days of football idea was vetoed...:). So here's what we have so far:

1. Making paper snowflakes to hang in the windows. (I can tell we will probably be making these every day :).

2. Christmas Advent Tree (My sister Brittany made this for me with little decorations in the pockets and they get to take one out every day. As an extra twist we put a clue in each pocket as well so that they get to go on a little treasure hunt every night. Yesterday their clue led them to a treat and today they found little snowglobes. And a shout out to my friend Jessie for the great treasure hunt idea!).


3. Candy Cane Countdown to Christmas (they get to untie a candy every day)

4. Daily Christmas Devotional (we read a few scriptures provided by the primary and take turns picking a favorite Christmas song. I think Carter is confused, he keeps calling it family home evening).

5. Christmas Lights!!!! I LOVE driving around looking at Christmas lights and we have done it 2 times in the last 3 days. The kids love it too and even if there is only one strand of lights up we stop and ooooh and aaaaah. Usually there is hot chocolate involved. Sugar free :).

6. We are going to do the 12 days of Christmas and I am super excited!! My family did this growing up and I am itching to do it again!

7. Deliver cookies/candy and sing Christmas carols

Any suggestions? I love to hear what other people do during the Christmas season. I just discovered the other day that I have a Christmas music channel on my tv. Since I live either in my car or at home we are listening to these lovely carols all day. Even Ellie has memorized a few! Here is a sneak peek at my sweet Ellie's Christmas princess dress (note the matching pacifier and the car in her hand :). I love having a girl...

On an almost unrelated topic- I made the candy countdown when Carter was at preschool and Ellie was my helper. I don't know how many candy canes she ate but I think it would probably take 2 hands to count them all! Well, I later spotted one of the candy canes stuck to her pant leg and I had to snap a picture. Probably the reason it was so funny to me was because yesterday she got a sucker stuck on the exact same spot :)!

What makes me smile...

Here are a couple of things that made me smile today:

Carter asked me if there are little people in the traffic lights changing the colors.

Ellie let me read her two books in a row, and then she full on ran away from me when I asked her if she was poopy :).

I went to the store at Cracker Barrel and bought stocking stuffers (GO, it's the best place ever)

Joe did the dishes. We're talking ALL the dishes and the counter is clean. Wierd, but awesome.

A few months back Carter saw a tampon and asked what it was. I choked and said they were for cleaning the toilet. Today I was cleaning and he said "Mom, can I have one of those little toilet cleaners so I can help you?". I hope he isn't going to be thoroughly traumatized when he someday finds out what those are...:).

We made snowflakes for the windows by our front door, it was Carters first time making them and he loved it! Then for FHE we drove around looking at Christmas lights and drinking hot chocolate. Does life get any better than this- I submit that it does not.

Dear Grandma

Dear Grandma,
I miss you. Things are not quite right when you aren't here. I love so many things you do and I want them done just the way that you do them. Like the way you push me on the swing- you pull me WAY back and then let me go. Mom doesn't do it right, she just tries to push me forward first. But she's learning. Almost every night I ask Mom if we can go outside and look at the stars just like you did with me. Sometimes the clouds hide the stars though, why does it do that?


We still have lots of leaves outside- Mom and Dad are not as good of rakers as you are. I'm kind of glad though because I still love to slide into a pile of leaves every day- you have the greatest ideas Grandma:).




I still like to make up my own recipes. Yesterday I microwaved some salt, flour and milk for almost 10 minutes when Mom was distracted making dinner- Mom doesn't have quite as much patience as you have though :).

Do you remember when we went to the corn maze?! I was a little nervous about getting lost but you were a good map reader- and an all around good trail buddy. Ellie got really muddy though, silly girl.



For Family Home Evening tonight we went and looked at Christmas lights and we had hot chocolate for dessert. I loved when your birthday cake was dessert, I wish we could do that more! I hope it's my birthday soon.

Mom and Dad tell me that I'm the luckiest boy ever because you are my Grandma, but I already know that! I love you Grandma, please come play trucks with me really soon. And bring Grandpa, we miss him around here too.
Love,
Carter

The Puppy and The Mailman

Halloween this year was EXTRA memorable for at least 3 reasons:
1) Grandma Benson was here!!
2) Carter was actually something other than a marine!!
3) Our powder room toilet flooded spilling water through the wall and all over our master bathroom/closets (yuck).

Though it was raining we still perservered and did a respectable amount of trick-or-treating with our friends the Sessions and our sweet Grandma. Ellie was a freezing ball of stickiness when we got home but she LOVED it. I made Carter and Ellie messenger bags to put their candy in AND my sisters Brittany and Bonnie collaborated to make all the nieces and nephews super cute Halloween bags so there were plenty of places to put candy and carry it all over the house. There is an immensely talented woman in our ward who turned the bags I made into true awesomeness with the personalized monograms. I thought they looked amazing and Carter still wears his costume for dress-up (yes, I said dress-up).

Our ward had their trunk-or-treat at our old Bishops Christmas tree farm and the kids waited almost a half hour in the cold drizzle because Carter really wanted to go on a hay ride. The happy memory will have been well worth the wait! Joe was the chili cook-off judge and he took his responsibility very seriously. He was a fair, unpartial though sometimes harsh judge :).

Couple of extra confessions:
1)okay, our neighborhood had a big halloween party the week before Halloween and I didn't have their costumes ready sooooo....they were both marines...
2)we totally grew the big pumpkin in that picture!! Carter couldn't bear to cut into it so a little permanent marker turned it into a masterpiece.

Our $30 zuchini

If our vegetables continue to grow at the sparse snails pace they have been then this, our first zuchini, cost us about $30 to grow! I think I mentioned before that between the lumber, dirt, seeds and plants it wasn't cheap to put this garden together and Carter and I have not produced much vegetation (though Carter doesn't know that- he thinks the garden is awesome and fruitful :) but I tell myself this is my learning year. I have never grown my own garden before- and gardening in the south is a whole new ball game with different bugs than we had back in Kansas (where I grew up) and our soil here stinks as well. In one picture Carter is holding our beautiful zuchini as well as a shrimpy store bought zuchini- he was pretty proud of how great ours looked. We sauteed them up with some olive oil, onion and garlic salt and it was delicious! We now have a whole one pumpkin growing as well as one banana squash and lots of tomatoes- maybe things are looking up for the Benson garden!

My Monkey

All who see Ellie on a regular basis know that her hair is almost always stuck up in a "Pebbles" style ponytail on top of her head. Her hair doesn't grow well on the sides so I don't have many options. She was sitting so happily on my counter the other day, playing in my sink, so I experimented with a few new do's. I showed Carter and he said:

"Uh, Mom- she looks like a monkey".

So we took it out and went with the "Pebbles" ponytail once again!