Thanksgiving Day

Zeb carving our first deep fried turkey
The spread

The happy hostess

We truly had a great Thanksgiving. Even though it was crowded (and if you look closely at the pictures below you can find a Halloween table cloth being utilized) the people were right and the food was good! What more can you ask for? I truly am thankful for a loving, caring family and especially for Arah and Steve who will let us invade their home and their lives just to have a few moments where we can all be together and create some memories. My favorite part of our trip this year was the late night talks after all the kids had gone to bed. It’s amazing after all these years that you can actually still get to know your family better just by sitting down and taking time to talk.

The Friends We Make

A highlight for me every time I go to Utah is being able to catch up with old friends.I love that with good friends you can go forever without talking and then when you see each other again it’s like you’ve never been apart. You can just pick up where you left off. Here are a few of the dear friends we got to see

Our Michigan Buddies

We got to go out to dinner with a couple of our Michigan abandoning friends. Sure they graduated from U of M and had job offers calling and families to support, but c’mon, where’s the loyalty? Really, having dinner with the Osguthorpes and Boyers just made us miss them all the more. Good conversation and good fun all the time!

Emily

Emily is another Michigan deserter who now lives in Washington but was in Utah for Thanksgiving. We got in some good time with Emily, her husband Teem and the kids but fortunately her daughter’s shirt was “misplaced” and left at Arah’s house so she was forced to stop by one more time before saying goodbye. Emily and I used to have a tradition of meeting at the mall every Thursday. We’d buy the kids a pretzel and a smoothie and just enjoy some good conversation together while the kids ran around the play area. I miss those days.

The girls

Once again I got to meet up with my girlfriends from high school. I think that I need regular visits with these girls because every time I see them I feel like I’m 16 again. I’m convinced that this is the secret to reclaiming my youth. I could just feel my wrinkles melting away. Seriously, I always have such a fun time with these girls and I’m forever thankful that I was surrounded by such good friends in high school. I truly hope that my kids will be able to find friends this good.

(This was me trying to look skinny next to Autumn and everyone laughing because it was totally not working)

The People We Meet

Our trip was also filled with new faces and old favorites.

New Faces

Siarah

Meeting new little Siarah was a dream. Siarah is my sister Julee’s new little baby and when I tell you she’s the easiest, sweetest, best baby in the world I am not exaggerating. She mostly slept, but even when she was awake she was a content little thing. The couple of times I did hear her cry it was almost apologetic. Like, “sorry to bother you but I could use a diaper change or maybe a little food.” This precious baby just really has a sweet little spirit and all of us (especially Ben who kept insisting that he cuddle and kiss her) had fun getting to “know” her.

Jessica

Travis (Shawn’s little bro) finally let us meet his girlfriend Jessica, I felt like we were being let into some sort of special secret society or something very important. In all seriousness, it was great to meet her and we liked her so much. Jessica is especially good with kids and gained a lifelong fan in Keely.

Old Favorites

Grandma Gibby

My dear grandma made the trip from CA to UT to spend Thanksgiving with us. This lady is someone who just loves you and never stops expressing her love and gratitude once you’ve earned it (or even if you haven’t). Keely loves when she gets to spend time with her Great Grandma. She always know she’ll come out with some treat or important treasure. This year it was a fun advent calendar. I love this woman!

Uncle Mike

My brother Mike has some serious fans in his nieces and nephews. They seriously celebrate whenever he shows up and incessantly ask for him when he’s not around. There’s good reason for this. One night Mike babysat for my sister Arah and I while we went out. When we got home Keely and Gavin were still up. When I asked Keely why she wasn’t in bed she replied, “’cause you never have to go to sleep when Uncle Mikey’s babysitting!” It’s true. The kids know that Uncle Mike will let you eat, have or do almost anything you want when he’s in charge. Hey, he’s the Uncle, right?! They are lucky to have him; he loves them to death and they know it!

Oh the Places We Go

Don’t you just hate when someone doesn’t post for a long time and then they throw up a bunch of junk all at once? Well, me too. But that’s not going to stop me! I still haven’t documented our trip out to Utah for Thanksgiving so I wanted to throw up a few pictures for posterity sake.

The Dinosaur Museum

One of Keely’s “must visit” places every time we go to Utah is Thanksgiving Point’s Dinosaur Museum. I have to say, I would be fine seeing it just once but for Keely and her cousin Gavin this place just never gets old!

Kangaroo Zoo

Kangaroo Zoo is also a popular choice for our Utah visits. I can see why they love this place so much. Who doesn’t want to climb, jump and slide around on big bouncy toys!

Jump On It

I would have got way more photos of this place had my camera not died. It’s just a place with a bunch of trampolines all connected together. Dangerous? Dirty? Maybe, but I loved it and we had to drag the kids away after 2 hours. I think I’d be a regular attendee if we lived here. Ben especially loved to test out the tramps and ever since we got home (and he figured out he can jump) you can see him trying to jump into the air at almost any given time of day. This place actually inspired Ben’s Christmas present from Santa. That’s coming later!

Already Missing Fall

Today was our first snow. I don't want winter to come! I enjoy Fall time in Michigan so much. it's absolutely gorgeous, beautiful leaves everywhere, great weather and lots of fun but there's always a little shadow hanging over Fall saying, "Winter's coming" and believe me that's a threat here. I swear Michigan Winters last for 6 months and it's sooooooo cold, dark and long . All right, everyone feeling cheery now?

Well, the threat of Winter reminded me that I never posted about our wonderful Fall family trip to upstate New York. We went with the same group we went to Niagara Falls with last year (the Collis and Savage families) plus the Smiths who were great additions to the fun. We rented one big cabin and just enjoyed each others company. There was lots of good food, good conversation and of course some good competition.

As you can see Keely had a fan in Anna (below)

Anna and Ben also got along really well until the last day or so when Anna started saying "I hit Ben now." Yep, she was just making the announcement that she was about to hit Ben. It was actually a great intimidation tactic and I'm sure that it was Ben's Karma, payback for all those innocent people he took on during his hitting stage. I was cracking up everytime she announced her plans.

The cabin had a huge yard complete with a a huge grassy play area (above), a fire pit (below) and a pier on the lake. The kids loved it!

On Friday we went into town and took a ride on a ski lift so we could see the beautiful leaves. The fall colors and fresh air was amazing. Oh, and apparently this little town is known for their grape pie (which I've never heard of) so of course we had to try it and I have to say it was pretty good.

Matthew and Keely were quite the hikers, I swear they could have kept going all day!

On Sunday we went and visited Palmyra and had a great time.

Visitor's Center at the Smith farm

Sacred Grove

Smith cabin

Visitor Center at Hill Cumorah

Yes We Can

While I'm so happy with the outcome of the election I know that not everyone is but I wanted to post a link to Obama's acceptance speech just in case anyone missed it. It's 18 minutes and definitely worth listening to. He's both gracious and inspiring and makes you proud to be part of this great country. One important thing that I think will come from this victory is an energy that we've been missing in America for a long time.

McCain was also very gracious in his comments and I really think that now that the fighting and bitterness of the campaigns is over there will be a great opportunity for both sides to work together. Today is a good day.

Halloween Scream

Here's some pictures from Halloween. Keely decided she wanted to be an angel and then said, "so mom, will you be the devil?" I was happy to oblige. Keely really was an angel on Halloween though. We got home earlier than planned from a party on Halloween night and there were still trick or treaters out but because we weren't planning to be home I hadn't bought any candy. Keely just dumped all her trick or treat candy in a bowl and said, "Let's just use mine!" And she was serious. I would have never done that as a kid!
My friend Elizabeth made Ben's Bam Bam costume along with his cousin Aviva's Pebbles costume. They were quite the cute pair, thanks Elizabeth!
We had a great Halloween with lots of activities and parties but my favorite part was actually the trick or treating.
When Ben figured out that he got candy he was super into going door to door. The funny thing was that instead of just taking the candy Ben was trying to trade people (see picture below).When the person at the door would give him something, he would just reach in his basket and try to give them something right back. I guess he figured, "hey, they're hooking me up, I'll hook them up!"