Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! This year was special because we had our first Thanksgiving in our new house, and we felt like a real established family with our own dinner table to eat and everything! To make it extra special, we invited the 4 missionaries serving in our ward to join us. We also had some old times friends, who turned out to be an amazing help in the kitchen.

Thanksgiving dessert table with triple berry pie, pumkin spice bundt cake,  apple pie, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, mini pumpkin pies, and spice cake donuts. Thanksgiving doesn't have to just be all about the pie, right?

Turkey turned out amazing. 

The kitchen help

Entertainment for the kids while dinner was being prepared from the Caravan Shoppe

First attempt at pie. Thanks goodness for Jewel.

The kids table. This is a picture from the top showing the print out table clothe. From the Caravan Shoppe

The wall decoration to remind the family of the love and memories we share together.

Close up on the dessert table. We forgot to get a photo with all the other pies we also made lined up on the table.

Carving the Turkey.

The kids table after the day had finished.

Ninjago party

Kenny went through a few different ideas of party themes before settling on Ninjago this year. The reality is the kid loves anything Lego, but Ninjago has been his favorite lately. We had lots of fun treats for this party so I literally spent every night for about two months creating stuff, placing it in the freezer and then doing it again. I stack everything up in the freezer and then take it out the night before so it's like a magic preparation the night before. 

Kenny and Ellie doing their ninja moves.

Amazing Grandma Patty made every one of those bandannas by hand and colored all the Chinese words and red sun. It says "Happy Birthday" in Chinese (or at least we think so, according to Google Translate).

I got the idea for the Kruncha treats from Wants and Wishes design. Nobody thought they looked like Kruncha, but they appreciated the effort ;).

The place settings for each kid

Inspiration for edamame and candy sushi was from Anders Ruff

We made lots and lots of ninja cookies for everyone

I saw lots and lots of different versions of the Sensei Wu cake out there, but finally decided on making the base cake with chocolate covered oreos on top and then the minifigure out of chocolate with the lego minifigure mold like these ones.

Nunchucks...aka chocolate covered pretzels
Also inspired from Wants and Wishes design. My advice is to not make these for an outdoor party...they melt super fast in the sun

More cookie details

. The manager of Pei Wei was kind enough to donate all the fortune cookies for me to dip in chocolate and chopsticks to our cause!

All the chocolate legos started melting pretty quickly in the sun, but at least we got a picture of the rice (krispies) cakes!

Scrumptious cake pops are a must to my kids at their birthday parties

Chocolate covered oreos // take out table cake

Gearing up all the kids with headbands and swords for the Ninjago battles. Turns out releasing 24 kids into a giant bounce house with plastic weapons wasn't a great idea.

Kenny had such a great time.

Cutting the cake and friend fun again!

The candy take out bar

Scooping up his goods for his take out box // Ninja cake pops

Get your world-class lemonade for just one dollar!

Kenny and Dylan were so eager to sell lemonade this summer and we finally got around to it just before school started back up again. They were shouting "Get your world-class lemonade for just one dollar" to anyone within earshot. Kenny's goal was to earn $300,000 selling lemonade and he only came up about $299,980 shy of it. Not too bad for 30 minutes of standing on our street corner.

We were dog sitting this weekend so Desi came to join us at the lemonade stand.

Back to school book exchange

The last weekend before Dylan and Yara left for Italy we had a lemonade back to school book exchange party for the kids. They all picked a few of their own books to swap with each other and got to enjoy lots of goodies and yummy food. Yara made some amazing flatbread, Sara and Jorge brought spectacular empanadas and we made our favorite fresh summer chicken salad. 

Enjoying some homemade lemon popsicles on the porch

We surprised the kids with tons of water balloons Joey had filled for a big water fight! They loved it.

The kids put a lot of effort into decorating this cute little cake for their party. I couldn't help but to order all the little candies on it from a sweet shop in the U.K. 

Always licking the frosting off the tops of the cookeis

My first attempt at homemade macarons. I studied and read lots and lots before giving it a go, but was still a bit disappointed in the way they turned out. I guess macarons really are as tricky as the rumors say. They seemed more like whoopie pies to me. Everyone LOVED them anyway, especially Joey.

We put a jar of crayons out so the kids could decorate the paper tablecloth as they munched on treats.

Lemon chex mix...not as good as the original nutty buddies but still worth a try for the sake of a lemon party.

These lemon pops turned out so yummy! See the recipe at the end of the post.

By the end of the party there wasn't any white left on the table cover!

Sugar high!

Getting ready to set up a lemonade stand // This ceramic pitcher is so special to me because my grandma Beth made it by hand.

They all took about one bite of cake and then just ate the candy on the outside. 

Homemade Lemon pops:

INGREDIENTS

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup water

1 Tbsp light corn syrup

Zest of 2 lemons (ONLY the yellow part!!!!)

1 cup of lemon juice--no pulp (about 4 lemons)

Heat water and sugar in small saucepan until sugar completely dissolved. Add lemon zest and corn syrup to water mixture. Bring to a simmer, then remove from heat and let cool.

Add the water mixture to the lemon juice, straining out the lemon zest as you pour the mix into the juice.

Pour the lemon mix into the popsicle molds. Put in freezer for at least 4 hours. To unmold, run under hot water for a few seconds.

I also added a thin slice of lemon to each mold which turned out to be super yummy to suck on at the end.

From simplyrecipes.com