The Kies Family: Thanksgiving, Beautiful Ballerina, Holidays at The Planning Center

I attended my last Monday night of cake class last Monday ( before Thanksgiving) and this was my fourth and final creation. A triple layer white and chocolate cake with twinkie cream and chocolate butter cream filling. I had a ball doing the class and hope to be able to continue to work on my skills. I still haven't perfected my butter cream frosting recipe and certainly have more learning to do but for now I'm happy with my skills. Thanks to Carolyn Maddox and Eric for pushing me out of my comfort zone to take the class!!

Last week we had our first official snow. The kids were super excited to help me clean off the driveway. They literally worked their hearts out till it was mostly clean. The snow froze to solid ice before we had a chance to get out there the day that it actually snowed so it took a hoe to break it all up. We switched off every now and then, two of us with shovels and the other with the hoe. Kennon kept saying to Maddox and I 'keep working…keep working..' It was so cute. The goal was to get the driveway cleared off for Daddy! They were good little helpers.

Kennon posing with his 'new' but old PJs from my hand me down friend Katie. He loves these with the snowmen and they are a super warm fleece. He's holding a Wii remote. The kids are emphatic about the Wii and play almost everyday in some capacity!! Both kids' coordination has improved drastically since we started with it this summer. It's actually pretty fun to watch…and a perfect energy burner now that it is cold outside.

Maddox and Kennon helped me make crock pot applesauce last week. We took it to Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jean's house for Thanksgiving. It was super easy, relatively healthy and REALLY GOOD!!

So this is what you do with left over frosting when you run out of cake. My class is now over which means I'm not actually baking currently but I still have stock piles of frosting left in the fridge from all my projects of varying colors. It lasts a long time as long as you have a lid on it and it stays cold. We happened to have some graham crackers!! Maddox requested three colors for this particular cracker. Luckily she has forgotten it's in the fridge now and hasn't requested any lately….her teeth are thanking her!!

Kennon and Maddox in our whirlpool tub!! We don't do this often so it is a very special treat. We thought the night before Thanksgiving was perfect for this activity!

We traveled over to Grandpa Jim and Grandma Jean's house on Thanksgiving day for a big feast. Great Grandma Reta, Aunt Veta, Uncle Mark and cousins Jaci and Alex were there to join us. We had a great time…. the kids were well behaved and there was lots of great food…including BOTH turkey and ham!! Way to go Grandpa Jim. Grandpa Jim showed Maddox and Kennon how to break the wishbone the morning following the big celebration. Kennon got the long end!! Thank you to Grandma Jean and Grandpa Jim for hosting AND for keeping the kids overnight for an extra night to get Eric and I a kiddo free night.

This year we will have two Christmas trees in our house. We have Eric's mom's artificial tree which we put up last Sunday in the basement. The kids had a blast decorating it once Eric and I finally got the lights all functioning…. This is the first artificial tree I've encountered. It has the lights already attached to the branches, which is new to me. You have to have all the plugs hooked up just right and in the right sequence to get all the branches lit….I"m sure you can infer that after what seemed like forever, and probably WAS in kid time, we gave up and just added our own string or two of lights to make the lighting look relatively even. I"m pretty sure we'll spend less time this weekend stringing up the lights on our real tree!! :) HAH!! I thought those artificial pre-lit trees were supposed to be 'easy'!! But, we are sure happy to have a little of Eric's mom's spirit celebrating with us in the holidays.

Aunt Kelly sent the kids each a Christmas advent calendar. They get to pull open the tab each day and find a little piece of chocolate behind the door. So fun!! You can see the excitement in Maddox's eyes below. You can also see she has on a dress. Eric and I purchased a Sonos sound system for the living room this past weekend. We are having dance parties NIGHTLY now which require Maddox, or so she thinks, to have on a dress!! It is super fun. We are thankful to Uncle Tyler who helped us sift through speaker technology and recommended this device. It is fabulous!!! Thank you!

So Maddox is really loving her Wednesday afternoon ballet class at the museum. We, as parents, only get to peek at her work one time per month for only 10 minutes at the end of a specified class. Yesterday was PEEK day. I was so happy with her improvement from October's peek class. She has perfected her gallop and her skip and is more appropriately alternating use of her legs, which has always been a challenge for her. I absolutely think the videos are adorable ( especially the little girl to the right of Maddox with the pigtails in the second video). I am really proud of her and you can see in the videos she is really loving it with smiles and looks of appreciation on her face. She is getting a high FIVE after one of her routines from her little brother who is always happy to sit and watch his big sis dance up the floor. She has her recital in May and her class' routine is Winnie the Pooh. She will have a consume that resembles a bee!! How cute.

Tonight was The Planning Center's annual holiday client open house. We get all dressed up and head over for food, fun, and hanging with the other Planning Center kiddos. I get to chat with some of Eric's clients…..and run after the kids. Most of you know The Planning Center is big and there are lots of nooks and crannies for the kids to run in and out of.

All The Planning Center kids managed to sit still for a few seconds while I shot a quick photo. Maddox used to be the oldest of them all but the daughter of the primary owner of The Planning Center started dating and is now engaged to and having a baby with a nice fella who has two older children. Maddox is just a year or so younger than Madison so they play well together. From the left Mason 2, Michael 8, Madison 6, Maddox, Christopher 4, Lily 3, Kennon….phew. We are only missing Graham who is Lily's 1 year old little brother and was home in bed. So cute!! The all had a ball running, racing, and riding all the toys in the basement while the adults/clients hung out upstairs.