The Nutcracker

The Dance Center is the greatest dance studio!!! Every year they put on a Fabulous production of The Nutcracker. They have all the students in their studio perform and higher college/professionals to play the largest roles. It is perfect! It is Good and it is a shortened version to capture the attention of the little children and get them hooked on ballet at a young age. :) I lOVE it! And to make it better you get a huge discount if you go both nights so I bought the back to back night ticket and took each of my older two girls on a mommy-daughter-date.

 The night that I went with Eliannah was magical. We dressed up and got excited. She chose to sit with Gabriella and her family. Fun. She had a hard time sitting through the whole thing, but She was simply ecstatic to be there. :)

Tsadakah and I dressed up too. She knew what to expect because Eliannah had told her all about it. She watched the ballet completely. Loved it. And she wanted to be in ballet for a few days afterward. She is so cute!

Our Thanksgiving

I was more excited about Thanksgiving than I have been in a long time. I was going to be hosting for the first time and I was just super excited to be able to do it in my beautiful new house with my china that I got at our wedding. I wanted it to be a special event and I really felt that it was. :)

 

 

Michael bought  a Smoker and we had smoked turkey which is really superb! He was the star of the show because it turned out absolutely perfect!! It really couldn't have been better. He had practiced smoking turkey for weeks before hand.

 

 

Tsadakah and Lara.

Olivia and Anna

Isaac, Carson, Eliannah, and Stratton.

Seth, Tsadakah, and Lara.*MiKaylah fell asleep on the downstairs couch right before dinner time so she didn't eat with us, she ate later.

Hayley, Ari, Steve (my dad, who is being like the guy on Patch Adams who always has his hand up. lol My dad is so random sometimes.) Marsha (my mom) and Troy.

I went to Pinterest and found some ideas to make it special and beautiful. I typed many quotes on Thanksgiving and taped them to each cup. It was much prettier on goblets but I didn't have enough for our whole group, so we did what we could. I also made these napkin holders and I am very proud of them.

And as traditions go we had a lot of pie! There wasn't 25 pies, but there was still enough that we could each have had half a pie to ourselves. There was a cake because it was also Lara's birthday.

 

Olivia, Leah, Lara, Hayley, Rivkah, MiKaylah, Anna, Marsha, & Steve.

Unfortunately, my sister Simcah couldn't make it because she was on a Disney cruise. Poor thing! ;) lol. She was greatly missed.