Thanksgiving Fun!

Tyler, Tyler, Tyler!  I have spent all morning trying to find a lost notebook of Tyler’s, only to find out he left it in his 4th period classroom J  He is seriously organizationally challenged!  But hopefully he will get it before High school.  Anyway, in other news….

We’ve had a change of plans for Christmas!  After realizing Tyler would NOT be able to leave on the 20th (due to 2 major exams) per our original plan we would have to leave the 21st…but upon looking at some airline tickets we found some decently priced ones through Southwest.  So we snatched them up.  They aren’t perfect, but they will get us there only a day later than we could have gotten there driving, but we will stay another day as well!  So we are flying out CHRISTMAS EVE, and will arrive in the evening that night and will be there through the 31st.  We will get a rental since no one has a car big enough to pick us up, plus we wouldn’t want to make you drive all the way to LAS on Christmas Eve.  I am excited at the prospect of NOT driving for 24 hours, and the kids will be thrilled we get to go on an airplane. 

We have had a FANTASTIC week filled with family, fun and some great eats.  It was really, REALLY nice to have family in our home for Thanksgiving.  Andy was successful in cooking the turkey via his Big Easy infrared fryer, which is a HUGE success considering we’ve struggled cooking turkey’s all the way through in past years (ahem…EVERY year we’ve cooked one we have failed).   It was great to not have to worry about eating raw turkey meat, hahahaha.  A few prayers were said over that turkey on our companies behalf!  Also we had quite the array of pies….I’m thinking 8 or 9 pies total (Cami making 6 of them I believe)!  We have plenty of leftovers for sure in that department!  Other than food we made turkey shirts, played games, hung lights, had nerf wars, took family pictures (see attached), went and saw Frozen (LYNDS, we MUST take you if it is still out when you come home).  I really, really liked that Movie!  The music is just AWESOME!!!  Disney is long overdue in a decent musical production and this one wins the prize in my humble opinion.  So any of you that haven’t seen it GO, the music absolutely makes it.  Tyler went into the theater dragging his feet, but came out all smiles saying how he was going to buy a particular song from it as soon as he earned another song (via his daily writing in his school planner).  So that my friends is all the proof you need, it’s great!

Well I can’t believe Christmas is already here!  We are going to get our Christmas tree tonight for FHE and decorate it.  We are also starting a couple of new traditions this year.  One we started (as of yesterday) called the 25 days of Christ.  There is a lady who put together ornaments and devotionals for each day including things from modern day prophets starting with his birth and going through the life and resurrection of the Savior.  So the kids get to take turns to“open” the ornament and read the scriptures, etc.  I’m hoping it will help us remember the reason for the Season!

The other tradition I am not sure I was fully committed to starting, but we have, so I must continue.  Have you guys heard of the Elf on the Shelf?  It’s basically a little Elf doll that keeps an eye on the kids, but only comes alive at night…and by morning you always find him in a different place, doing different things.  For example on day one the kids found him coloring in a coloring book, and today was day two…and I failed.  He never moved (told you I wasn’t fully committed!).  So everyone was quite disappointed this morning!  But I assured them I would call the Elf hotline to see if there was something wrong and get the magic in him again J  Kaylee bought it.  Not sure about Audrie.  Anyway, we have some fun ideas involving TPing the Christmas tree, making snow angels in flower, roasting marshmallows over the stove…etc.  Should be fun, I just have to get fully on board!