Thanksgiving 2019

Random memory time. My mom had a Franklin Planner in the mid nineties. Remember how life-changing those were? 

My root canal and her visiting teaching appointments never to be forgotten again!

One Sunday, I'm going to say in 1992, I was flipping pages through her planner, (during Sacrament meeting no less because the threshold for entertainment is pretty low for a 9 year old during church). Flip flip flip. 1993....1994....1995. Flip flip flip. I come upon the calendar for 2000 and get the weirdest feeling in my stomach. Kind of like the closest thing to time travel I'll ever experience. Is this where we're headed? No more 19s but 20?? This is so far away. There's no way we'll ever get there. And it will be weird if we ever do.

And yet, here we are, the last month of 2019. 20 years PASSED the weirdo year of my future. And you want to know who's not here with us? Franklin day planners. 

*****

Random picture time. These gems are from Erica's October journal. This is a witch. "I lost my broom."

Erica doesn't remember what she wrote but I think it's "My witch swims."

School mornings are pretty nutso around here. My kids get themselves 85% ready on their own but have no concept of time. I'm kind of like the train conductor shouting "all aboard" but I say things like "If you want a ride to school I'm leaving in 1 minute or you can ride your bike." So imagine me standing near the door to the garage saying things like that and also this is happening:

 Tigey don't go to school. Tigey don't care.

A couple of weeks ago I helped Erica's class make these cute turkeys with tempura paint which stinks. (This is Henry's from kindergarten as reference because Erica hasn't brought hers home at time of writing.)

I take James with me each week and Mrs. Chidester is the best and always lets him participate. This is James's interpretation of a thanksgiving turkey and as a hater of modern art, I love this. (But it proves my hate of modern art as crap any 3-year-old can make.)

Thanksgiving day! Yay! What's not to love about a holiday filled with food and games. The Syme family likes to taste test stuff. We've done all the dark colas, rootbeers, vanilla ice cream, brownies, a blind identification of Hostess snack cakes and some others. This time we pitted Aggie ice cream against BYU creamery.

Clockwise from top: Aggie chocolate, Aggie blue mint, BYU blue goggles, BYU chocolate

 We don't agree on much but the Symes like their ice cream.

 BYU chocolate beat Aggie and a few of us died inside. The blue ones were pretty different and both good in their own ways.

 Now that we were REALLY full on dinner and ice cream, we went outside to play kickball in the snow with a semi-flat ball before it got too dark.

 James was great at getting in the way and asking me to fix his mittens.

 I got out a lot but there were some bad calls and how can you force an out when the base is a 4 foot long slushy mound?

James seemed to think that he could hand Cody snowballs and tell him who to throw them at. Because he did it. Every time.

 Then we went inside and ate all the pie and it was the best.

Justin likes hunting and if he can't go hunting, the second-best thing is Christmas tree hunting.

 I hadn't trudged through thigh-high snow since I was a kid so that added to the Christmas magic.

 These kids were just there for the hot chocolate.

 I found this during our pre-holiday room clean-out. Henry made this last year.

We're going to do it all. Dubs it.