Sunday, November 29, 2015

Thanksgiving Event - Day 1 (Wednesday)

Jackie would pick up the first arrivals (Dustin/Karen - MN; Grandma Lyla, Diane & Nathan -IA) at the airport at approximately 9am. She took them to Jill's house. Where they would get acquainted with the all the kiddos (Andrew, Aurora and Caleb). This would be the first time everyone would see Aurora and Caleb. They also helped Jill and Audrey do some appetizer prep for Thanksgiving.

Doug has been off for the past three weeks helping to get things ready around the house and smoking some meats. I was off the first week of November but would work right up until 3:30pm on the date everyone arrived. Family members started arriving at our house around 4pm and it was non-stop activity until Sunday afternoon.

Everyone brought items for the treat table and it was re-stocked every day so that no one would go hungry.

There were cookies, nuts, peanut brittle, popcorn, chocolates, fudge, trail mix, and puppy chow.

Close up of some of the cookies

The center of the table.

Karen's cream cheese cut-out cookies.

Grandma Lyla's puppy chow.
I don't think this lasted longer than 1 day!
 
There was plenty of time for board games.
Play time with Aurora

 Play time with Andrew

Dinner was three types of soup: Chili, Chicken Tortilla, and Potato
Salad bar with all the fixings
Karl/Audrey provided dessert: Angel food cake with a fresh fruit topping

Sleeping arrangements were assigned.
14 at my house; 5 @ Kiefers; 7 @ Elliotts

Thanksgiving Event - Day 2 (Thursday)

Thursday morning started out making breakfast for the crew. Breakfast burritos and homemade breakfast pizza. Served at 10am sharp.

After breakfast clean up there was some down time and due to the rain, people were able to sit out in the garage.

















We did have time to take a couple of four generation photos in between rain showers.
 Lyla (78) Doug (55) Karl (32) Aurora (9 months)

Lyla (78) Doug (55) Jill (29) Andrew (3) Caleb (4 months)

Then it was game time! First up: LOGOS and LEGOS

The LOGOS game consisted of a three page sheet of various corporate Logos and they had to correctly identify the name of the company logo. Aurora is shown here helping Great-Grandma Lyla.


The Lego challenge: Each member needed to make some type of Christmas ornament with the Legos.
 There is some serious Lego building going on in the living room.
 Lots of looking for particular Legos.
 They were very creative!
 These are the 15 completed ornaments
Little did the participants know, there was a second part to this challenge that would take place after the appetizers were served.  The second part of the challenge was that these ornaments would be judged and then the final six would go on to part 2 of the competition.  

Part 2 of the competition is that the 6 finalists had to find a partner they worked well with and stand back to back and re-create their ornament. The final judging would be based on how well the final ornaments matched.
These are the 6 ornaments that were selected by our judges (Jill and Doug)
Below are the ornaments and their reproductions.






Dustin & Karen's Christmas trees were selected as the Overall Winner!

Appetizers were served around 2pm: Smoked Salmon, various meats/cheeses/crackers, various pinwheels, pickle/ham roll-ups and pumpkin dip with gingerbread cookies

On to the next game of Bananagrams - Holiday edition.
The group was split in to 4 equal teams. Each team was given a Bananagram pouch of letters.
The goal was to use only Christmas/Winter words and create a scrabble edition word puzzle.
They would receive 5 points for each completed word, 25 points for using all their letter tiles and 25 points to the team that had the longest word. Below are the four final puzzles.



Then we were finally ready for the Thanksgiving meal.
There was food on every kitchen surface: Smoked ham, Smoked turkey, mashed potatoes/gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, sausage stuffing casserole, deviled eggs, cranberry sauce, Taffy apple salad, rolls and 4 pies (apple, pumpkin, pecan, chocolate silk) for dessert.

I'm thankful for a wonderful day of memories!!


Thanksgiving Event - Day 3 (Friday)

Today was a No-Cook day. Breakfast was "On the Go" at each of the respective homes.
Our location had waffles, pop tarts, banana bread, pumpkin bread and muffins.

We would all plant to meet at Top Golf at 11am.  Topgolf is a three level golf entertainment facility. with over 65,000 square feet and 102 hitting bays. Aim for the targets, and hit your ball!  Find out how far and accurate your shot was instantly on the TV screen in your bay.  www.topgolf.com
 The babysitter arrived at 10:30 am so that Andrew and Aurora would be cared for while the rest of the group had some fun. This experience would be new for those traveling from Minnesota and Iowa.
We had 4 bays reserved from 11am - 2pm and this included appetizers (queso/chips) and lunch (chicken/steak fajitas, black beans, cilantro lime rice and for dessert chocolate chip cookies/white chocolate dipped strawberries)

  THE FOOD WAS EXCELLENT
 Synchronized queso chip chomp!
 
78 yr old Grandma Lyla even got in on the 'swing' of the event.
 Caleb stayed warm and toasty in his hat and he even slept under the heat lamps.
 Jackie & Jonathan always take an adorable photo..but the bear hat put it over the top.
 The boys in Bay 314
 The Andersen girls
 Karen's watching where her ball went.
 Dustin in full swing
 Karl and Kara lined up to take their next shot.
 Doug, Joel and Kristen lined up for their next shot.

After we got back to the house, we took some family photos.
This is everyone!!
 This is Grandma Lyla with all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Dinner was pizza from Papa Johns.
Followed by some Wheel of Fortune - Kuklenz style.

The WHEEL!

Puzzle: Loading the Dishwasher
 Puzzle: On the Map
 Before/After puzzle: BY THE DAWN EARLY LIGHT BULB
 Jill was the master solver!
 Alicia and Joel had John boxed out of this game.
Stay tuned for more fun tomorrow.