Jessica Kopp

Thanksgiving Bingo

We are hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year and are planning on 25 people, with 8 of them under the age of 5. It is going to be tons of fun and a little crazy. I thought it would be a great idea to have some little kid activities planned to keep everyone happy, so I made this Abigail's assignment. She gets super excited about stuff like this and loves being in charge.

She decided she wanted to play bingo. We went to the dollar store and bought some "special" prizes. Everyone is going to be fighting over the giant glasses and blue fur hat. Then she spent last week making Thanksgiving Bingo boards. She picked out all the clipart and after I designed the first board she took over moving all the pieces around and making everything nice and aligned. She did a great job and the kids are going to love it.

I think it is just too cute not to share, so here is a link to her bingo cards. There are 10 different boards plus 2 sheets of icons to cut apart and draw out of your pumpkin bowl.

Enjoy! Happy Turkey Day!

Download Thanksgivingbingo_v1

In case you were wondering...

If your husband gets a brand new super shiny MacBook laptop

and brings it home

and your daughter writes on it with a pen,

he doesn't have to kill her. . .

it will come off with a Magic Eraser. 

By Sydney Kopp

Sydney is turning into our little artist. She is always working on one master piece after another. I have a huge stack of pictures she has given to me. I cleaned off my desk last week and threw away a couple of them and when she found them in the trash I was in soooooooo much trouble. She told they were special and couldn't believe I woud get rid of something she worked so hard on. It didn't matter to her that I had a stack of 50 still on my desk.

Recently she has become very interested in painting. Not only does she love painting on paper, but a couple weeks ago begged me to buy her this alligator kit at the store. When we got home she was working on it before I had my coat off. She is so excited to give it to her teacher because she loves alligators (but wants me to take her back and get another one for her to keep.)

Evan loves Memmo

Evan is 16 months old this week and is learning so many new and fun things. Right now he is totally and completely obbsessed with Elmo or as he likes to call him "Memmo." Every morning I am greeted with a great big smile and hug, but as soon as his feet hit the ground he is running to my bed, pointing at the television saying 'Memmo' and asking for his 'Babba'. I think it is the cutest thing I've ever seen. He loves to snuggle up on my pillow, watch his morning cartoons and have a drink.

He used to ask for dadda, but he has been replaced with Memmo. Who can compete with all that giggling and red fur?

Happy Halloween

We celebrated Halloween on Saturday the 30th ALL DAY LONG!

We started off bright and early at the Rivetal Annual Halloween Costume Party. The kids look forward to this event every year and they were especially excited this year because it was at the Nickelcade. Not only did that mean unlimited video games and pizza, but unlimited Laser Tag. Abby has been begging us to take her to play laser tag for months and played every single time. She was actually really good because she is so small and fast. I think she even beat Derek in one of the games. She totally destroyed me.

Evan and Syd loved all the games. I think Syd went through $10 or $12 dollars worth of nickels. She ended up with over 1000 tickets. Evan loved all the blinking lights and anything that had a hammer, lever or buttons. I'm so glad he had on his Big Bird costume because he kept wandering off but was easy to spot in the bright yellow fur.

Costumes are, of course, required so I just threw on the doctor robe with some smeared blood on my face, but Derek found this amazing Bert costume and looked hilarious. He didn't leave the mask on for long, but when he did have it on Evan was always trying to eat his nose.

After the Rivetal Party we visited Melissa and Rob and then headed home to get ready for dinner and movie night with the Dowdles. We had manicotti, orange floats and lots of candy. Even though it was raining, the kids were still so excited to got trick-or-treating. This is one year I was glad to wave goodbye from my nice warm house and let the dads follow the kids around and freeze.

Evan loved answering the door and handing out candy. He would sit and look out the little side windows and get excited when someone walked onto the porch and knocked. Darci and I thought the kids would be back really soon, but we were sure wrong. They all went until their buckets were completely full. And they got some great treats: bottles of soda, full sized candy bars, tattoos.

We finished off the night with movies for everyone. The kids watched a couple of Halloween specials, while the adults got the full home theater experience downstairs. 

We had a great Halloween. Can't wait for next year!


 

Carving Pumpkins

Grandma and Grandpa Lasley came to visit the weekend before Halloween for the Primary Sacrament Meeting program and then spent the afternoon doing crafts with us. I knew Grandpa was an export pumpkin scraper and I didn't want to miss out on all the extra help.

Abby did the skeleton pumpkin and even though it ended up being harder then she thought, she took her time and did an amazing job.

Sydney wanted a traditional pumpkin face on her pumpkin. She designed and carved the whole thing herself.

Derek was very good at supervising, but didn't want to do his own design so I ended up with 2 pumpkins. I did the bat for Evan and the 'k' is because I'm a geeky designer.

Mummy Dinner

I always look back on holidays and wish I'd been a better planner and done a few more special things. I wanted this year to be different so I planned a couple of special dinners and activities for the family. One of them was mummy pizzas. They were super easy (pizza sauce, olives, cheese, english muffins) and ended up being tons of fun. I'm not to going to lie, they are a lot cuter then they taste, but we'll definitely be doing it again.

I loved how they all ended up with their own personalities. 

And while we were all having a good time making our tasty treats, Evan was doing this in his high chair. I figured if 2 out of the 3 kids were having a good time it was a success.

I just robbed Kohl's

I'm always up for a good deal, but when Darci and I walked out of Kohls today and my receipt said I had saved over $800 I was in shock. I honestly felt like I was stealing from them. 

Darci and I are now the proud owners of 12 sets of Fiesta dish sets. Mine are in the lovely shades of Paprika and Turquoise, while Darci went more daring and bright with Scarlet, Sunflower, Shamrock, and Peacock. I can hardly wait to see all the fun dinners we are going to set with them.

Basically we worked every Kohl's deal and coupon and ended up paying around $17 (instead of the original $48) for each set and then on top of that I got $80 in Kohl's Cash to use next week. This is what happens when you combine a 45% off sale with a 30% off coupon and then throw in a buy 5 get 1 FREE. We totally hit the FIESTA JACKPOT. People in line behind us were very curious about our 2 overflowing carts and kept asking if they were on a super deal. We answered YES!!! every single time, with the hugest grins on our faces.

It looks like I've got some dinner parties to plan in my future.

 

Spooky Parade

Halloween isn't complete without a Spooky Parade at the elementary school. I love seeing all the creative costumes the kids come up with (or should I say the parents come up with.) Because the parade was at 8:15 in the morning Derek was able to come and the girls thought it was super special to have him there.

Abby was very excited to be showing off her cavewomen costume. She loved smearing mud/makeup all over her face and I told her the bigger the hair the better. She even made a little sling out of extra material and carried Evan's little caveman around all day like her baby.

****Notice anything different about Syd?? She lost her very first front tooth this week and was very proud to be showing it off in all the pictures. She actually pulled it out while at school and they gave her a cute little tooth necklace to bring it home in.

Dreaming of a White Halloween

October 27th: 3 days before Halloween and there is snow on the ground.

I guess I should be used to it, having lived in Utah my whole life, but I still get furious every time it snows this early in the year. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of snow, I'd just appreciate if it let me enjoy fall for a little bit longer.

Abigail on the other hand didn't seem to mind at all. She thought the snow was great and spent the afternoon building this mini snowman. She was very proud of her little guy but upset when it was all melted the next morning.