Traditional Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving Day, we always meet with Stephen’s family (siblings, parents, grandma, and aunts, uncles, and cousins) at his sister’s house.  This year I cooked the ham, crockpot green beans, and corn casserole.  After lunch, we took some pictures then everyone went their ways.  We went to Stephen’s parent’s house and hung out and let Ryan nap…and looked at Black Friday ads until our eyes were crossing!

For some reason we didn’t get an entire family shot this year…but this is all the Banning women.  From the left:  Hallie (our 2nd oldest niece), Tatum (3rd niece), Me, Kim (Stephen’s sister) who is holding Kelby (4th niece), Peggy (Stephen’s mom) who is holding my Paige, Hannah (1st niece), Parker (5th niece), and Amanda (Stephen’s SIL, married to his brother).

The boys are outnumber 2:1 on Stephen’s side of the family.  It’s perfectly even on my side for now…which is the way it’s always been except for the years that Paige was the only grandchild.  From left:  Stephen(baby of his family by 11 and 14 years!) holding Ryan, the 7th grandchild and only boy, Greg (Stephen’s BIL, married to Kim), Michael (oldest brother), and Stephen’s dad, JB, is sitting. 

The complete Banning Grandkids picture…barring acts of God alone, we’re all done having kids!  From left: Tatum (#3), Hallie (#2), Hannah (#1) holding Ryan (#7), Kelby (#4), Parker (#5), and Paige (#6).

Here are all the kiddos with Papaw Jb and Grandma

Why we didn’t get a picture of me and Stephen and our kids is beyond me! I feel so bad that that picture didn’t happen.  BUT, we did get a picture of just Stephen and I which seems to never happen anymore!

Non-Traditional Thanksgiving 2011

My sister and I are the pickiest eaters on the planet, hands down.  Neither of us enjoys traditional Thanksgiving fare like turkey or dressing.  When we would all gather with my Mom’s extended family many years ago, she always made sure someone was making a ham (or she just made it herself), plain mashed potatoes (none with cream cheese or sour cream included were acceptable), and normal bread.  That’s about all we would eat.  Desserts were a little easier, but don’t even think about putting a pie with meringue in front of us or cheesecake, pumpkin anything, or oatmeal raisin cookies. Stick with plain chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, etc.  Leslie would go for peanut butter desserts, but I didn’t (and still don’t) like them. 

All that to say, when our large extended family started celebrating with individual parts our Mom ditched the entire traditional food idea and went for something we all like:  steaks, baked potatoes, corn on the cob, and bread.  I used to hate Thanksgiving because I hated the food…now, bring it on!

We had Thanksgiving with my parents and Leslie and Zach on Wednesday night at our house.  It was really fun to have everyone in our house!  Mom brought all of the food over and Leslie and I did desserts…nothing with meringue or pumpkin was anywhere near our kitchen!  Dad grilled the steaks while we had baked potatoes, corn on the cob, bread, shrimp and cocktail sauce, and chips and salsa in the kitchen.

I promise I did help get the food ready, but someone had to be behind the camera as well!  Our house isn’t large enough to host many family events, but since it was just the 6 adults and my two kids it was perfect.

My Dad provided Ryan with his first bite of shrimp ever and he loved it! I won’t touch shrimp for money (I’ve tried!) or anything else you might think to bribe me with.  Ain’t happenin’.

Stephen and Zach especially enjoyed the pre-meal snacks.  Stephen looks like he got caught digging into something he wasn’t supposed to have!

During dinner, Zach needed a steak knife and since all of our small ones were in use, he grabbed the largest on we have!  He said it got the job done, however.

Paige definitely enjoyed the  bread-Funny thing is, Leslie used to eat her pieces of bread exactly like Paige is doing.  I’ve said it 1,000 times before but if I hadn’t witnessed her birth, I’d swear she belonged to my sister.

Ryan wasn’t much of a steak fan (I think it’s too much work for this lazy little eater!), but he loved everything else.  He crashed hard that night and woke up not feeling so hot the next day.

Unfortunately, we didn’t pose for any family pictures.  I honestly think we forgot about it.  So, this is as close to a whole group picture as we got.  Pictures or not, we had a great time and we’re very thankful for family!

Let it Begin…

Warrior Basketball 2011-2012 begins tonight. 

Winding Down

This Thursday is our last Jr. High game of the year.  Our record isn’t going to end up the way we hoped it would.  But, you know what, I think the first year of truly being a head coach is about learning what works to motivate the boys, figuring out how to work as a head coach and be in charge of other coaches, treading lightly and being careful when you speak to parents about playing times for their son, and balancing all of that with more work and having a family.  It’s been hard on all of us.  I’m thankful that this is the last week, but in so many ways I’m sad!

We’ve built relationships with these boys that are absolutely precious to me.  Stephen’s players have been taught respect, love for Christ and one another, and responsibility and accountability-lesson that sadly haven’t been taught at home a lot of the time.  I love running into them at the county fair or WalMart or at church and just being able to talk to them about nothing, but seeing their faces light up because someone is giving them their undivided attention.  Precious.  Honestly, I love his team.  BWhite, JWhite, Ross, Frost, Hanuska, Magdaleno, Douglas, Benton, Green, the list goes on…

Our family has learned a lot during the course of this football season.  I’ve learned that I can a lot more than I thought I could with 2 kids by myself.  Paige has learned how to be a phenomenal helper to me, Ryan has learned to love football and head banging and tackling, and Stephen has learned that even though football is his job, it’s still a game and in the grand scheme of this life, being a football coach is a very small part of our lives and eternity.  The big job we all have to to live our lives to impact eternity.  Eternity, people! That’s big stuff.  Stephen is a small part of these boys lives, but he wants to impact them in a BIG way.  I’m so proud of him! He loves Christ, he loves us, he loves his job, and he loves his boys.  I’m blessed to be a small part of their lives and more blessed to get to stand next to Stephen!

A Doctor and her Patient

Since Paige decided to be a Doctor for Halloween, it was only appropriate that Ryan be her patient.  The costumes were very affordable and Paige got most of her “accessories” from ACH when she had her test done on the 27th.  We didn’t do much trick or treating this year…we went to a trunk-or-treat at a local church and then headed to Aunt Jan’s for our annual soup and snacks Halloween event.  Happy Halloween 2011!