A LITTLE SOMETHIN' MISSING . . .

Trey lost his very 1st tooth last week and we were all pretty excited!!! His tooth had been loose for quite a while and we kept telling him to quit being a woose and just pull it out already, but he insisted that it just wasn't quite ready ... hahaaaa!! Then last Wednesday when I arrived to his classroom for my weekly visit to help out, I got the news that he had FINALLY pulled it out!! Both me and Mrs. Tewers were very excited and he couldn't wait to get home and put it in his tooth fairy pillow!!

GO CARDINALS . . .

Clay scored tickets to the Cardinals - Cowboys game so we made a phone call to Uncle Bradley & Aunt Lorie to see if they were up for a day of watching the Kaintz kiddos while we went to the game and they said yes so we invited Byrne and Jaime to join us and had an awesome afternoon of adult time at the game!!! We had amazing seats and it ended up being a really good, edge of your seat game, with our Cardinals coming out on top woot woot and even though it was a little on the chilly side it was well worth freezin my butty off!! GO CARDINALS!!!

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK ALOT LIKE CHRISTMAS . . .

Another one of my favorite parts about Thanksgiving weekend is getting all the Christmas decorations out and decorating the house!! We have a whole grip of outside stuff, lights lights and more lights so that usually takes the most time and is atleast a 2 day job if not 3 ... thank goodness my husband is such a trooper!!

This year both the boys wanted to help Clay hang the lights and were right there on the ladder with him learning the ropes .. hahaaa!!

Once it's dark outside, we come inside to set up the tree and get it ready for ornaments!! But before we can even begin decorating the tree, I have 3 rules:

1. We have to be jammin' Christmas music (probably Clay's least favorite part of the whole weekend).

2. We have to have a fire burning in the fireplace.

3. We have to have Hot Coco (spiked for mommy & daddy ... we have an awesome hot coco cocktail recipe that is da bomb ... lol ... Coco with a shot of Malibu and a shot of Peach Snapps ... yummy yummy!!).

Once we have Momma's 3 rules taken care of, we turn the kids loose with any and all unbreakable ornaments!! I have to admit that our tree is finally starting to look half way normal as the kids get taller and the ornaments go higher up which has not been the case in years past!! Once the kids get all the unbreakable ornaments put on I put the breakable one's around the top portion to somewhat even it out along with keep them out of both the kids and the dog's tail's reach. The kids also have their own smaller tree that we put up with all their special ornaments (every year I get each kid an ornament that reflects something about them from that year) and this year we also started collecting Disney ornaments as well that we put on the kids tree!! My hopes are to eventually have enough Disney ornaments to set up another tree that is all Disney ... my Aunt has one with Disney ornaments from back when we were kids that I absolutely love!!!

Sunday is always reserved for letter's to Santa and usually the day that our elf "Zart" magically appears to watch over us!!

This time of year is so much fun ... I just love all the smells and the excitement in the air!! I am proud to report that our house was 100% decorated inside and out by the end of Thanksgiving weekend and that's a record for the Kaintz household!!! Tis The Season!!!

THANKSGIVING . . .

We spent Thanksgiving at Mom & Norm's this year and had a really great day with good family time and tons of good food!! We decided to make a little ride out of it and rode the ranger over .. which the kiddos were way stoked about (but when it came time to go home it was waaayyyy too cold so we ended up borrowing momma's ride for the night)!!

Rilyn was Aunt Lacey's BIG helper in the kitchen, getting all her dips ready ... lol!! She stood on her little stool right there with Lay the whole entire time "helping" her!!! All I can say is Aunt Lacey has much much much more patience than me!!

The "Thank You" tree . . . so, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a big sucker for traditions ... and it has always kinda bugged me (atleast since I have been a mom) that we never do any kind of tradition for Thanksgiving so this year I decided to put an end to that and start a new Thanksgiving Tradition of The Thank You Tree!!! Now where I came up with this idea is beyond me (minus the painting of the tree which I got from my cousin Katie's wedding that we just went to a few weeks back) hahaaaa ... and I know I drive my family, especially all the guys, completely crazy with all my ideas, but they put up with me and participate in my cheesy-ness anyways!!! So on to the details of this special little tree: for the tree itself I just went out into my backyard (another advantage of living in New River, haaa) and found what I thought to be the perfect size branch with just enough other branches and leaves coming off of it and chopped it off. Then I got some spray paint, which I chose a metallic copper color, and painted the entire branch. For the pot, I just got a cheapy terracotta pot in the right size from Home Depot and had all 3 of the kids do a hand turkey around the sides of it by putting paint all over their hands (using a different color on each finger for the feathers) and then glued on a googly eye and painted on feet and beak's. Once the paint was dry I put the tree into the pot and secured it with rocks. Ok so here's where the "thankfulness" part comes in .. out of scrapbook paper I cut out leaves and attached a piece of hemp to each leaf for hanging on the tree. Once we were all at Momma's hanging out and getting ready for dinner I passed out a leaf to each person there and had everyone write on their leaf what they were most thankful for this Thanksgiving and then we hung them all on the tree!! We then used the tree as a centerpiece for the pie table!! It turned out really neat and the tree didn't photograph nearly as good as it looked in person!! Cant wait to add new leaves next year and the many years after!!!

Storytime with Uncle Bradley!! Rilyn kept bringing books to Uncle Bradley to read to her!!

Our firewood supply was getting a little low so all the boys went out and found a dead tree and then used the Ranger to pull it down and broke it up to use in the fire pit!!!

Grandma and her boys!!! I dont think my kids have any idea how lucky they are to have such awesome grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles .. you name it!!!

After dinner we all cuddled up on the couches and watched the DVD Slideshow that Lacey made for our family reunion a couple years ago ... which is like the BEST slideshow ever ... and starts out with my Granparents when they were young all the way thru to them getting married and having kids and their kids growing up and having kids and so on all the way to now with all the Great Grandkids!!! Like I said it is an awesome video set to the perfect music and takes you thru 4 generations of Crabtree's ... pretty amazing stuff!!!

I know I say this quite often, but I have the most amazing family ever and spending times like this is what life is all about!! There were so many more great pictures I could have shared in this post ... so glad we got to spend Thanksgiving with my Grandpa & Grandma this year!!

We are most thankful for the many many blessings we have in our lives and for a healthy loving family!!

ROCK SPRINGS PHOTO SHOOT

While we had Grandpa & Grandma in town over the Thanksgiving holiday, Lorie suggested that we all get together for a picture!! This was an awesome idea and I thought why not do everyone's family holiday pictures at the same time ... so that's what we did!! We all met up at Rock Springs one morning and let the picture fun begin ... I think the pictures can do the talking on this post!!

Grandpa & Grandma:

Normy & Momma:

The Ingram Family:

Our crew ... The Kaintz Family:

Cody, Lacey & Chiefy:

The Whole Fam Dam:

Funny Face's!!!

Grandpa & Grandma with all their Great Grandkids!!

I have to say the lighting wasn't the most fantastic thing in the world for this little photo op, but we made it work and in the end I am so glad we made the time to do it!!