There Goes the Bird

I can’t believe it is Sunday already!  What a quick Thanksgiving Break.  As I look back I can’t remember anything that really happened over the break.  We had dinner, played games, ate pie, went shooting, ate pie, played more games, ate more pie, oh and slept in every morning – Glorious!  We won’t talk about Alicia’s waistline.  (I’m just happy I had hit a new low Thanksgiving morning, so I didn’t think twice about all the pie.)

As I went through the pictures we took I noticed that most of them were of Garrick.  I finally figured out that it was because he is the only one who will sit and give me cute smiles.  The other two boys have hit the goofy stage, which was really painful for Alicia when we were trying to get a family picture.  So here is a little snapshot of what happened(for my bros on missions).

Garrick loved the Black Friday ads more than anyone else.

Cousin Marya loves to snuggle with Garrick.  No pictures of the other boys since all they did was play the wii.  ALL DAY! (Oh, and no pictures of dinner, since I was busy taking them on Mom’s camera…oops:)

We got together with the Preece’s on Friday for a lunch at Grandpa Derek’s new office.  The boys loved playing in the lounge with all the sport memorabilia.  Great-Grandma joined us and had fun trying to get the babies to pose.  Those little girls love Garrick.  They both treat him like a little doll.

Haden and his bestest bud Lex. 

The 4 musketeers?  They were so funny about getting the seating just right at the table.  Logan and Jason couldn’t sit next to each other because they all had to sit by their cousins.

Friday after the lunch Dan took off up to the Provo gun range for the Annual Thanksgiving Shootout with my family.  This year Derek came along for the fun.

They had 3 competitions:  The rifle, handgun, and, of course, shotgun.  After a lot of ammo and fun, Derek pulled off a win in the Rifle competition.

Dan was excited to come in 4th overall.  He keeps saying he will practice and get better for next year.  Maybe we will take advantage of our Rec Pass and get some practice in for the next competition.  They missed Ian….or I should say they missed his ego.  It’s okay, they swear that they heard him complaining all the way from San Antonio.

Well, there we go.  A quick look at a couple of days from the last week.  Next installment will feature Pie Night.  A great opportunity to consume what?  Even more pie.  I know, I know, it boggles the mind.  Hopefully I will get it up in time to send off to the missionaries. 

Zipping Files

A supposed analogy?

Alicia:  Debra sent her songs in a zipped file.

Dan: That probably isn’t much smaller than sending them individually.

Alicia:  Really?  I thought that was why we zipped files.

Dan: They’re putting dominoes into socks and then dumping them in a bucket.

Alicia: Huh??? (Frantically trying to figure out 1)Why Dan was trying to give me a analogy for zipping files 2) What the crap is it supposed to mean?  - pit in the stomach like when I have to start analyzing Jacob 5! – it is too early in the morning to start thinking about English!)

Dan: Huh?

Alicia: How are dominoes like songs?

Dan: Huh?  The boys are putting the dominoes in socks and dumping them in a bucket.

Next time I will pay better attention to my surroundings.  (Yes we grunt at each other when asking questions.  Don’t know why.  Probably just pure laziness)

Connor on weight

“When you hit daddy’s tummy it always woggles!”

Because He is Just SO Awesome!

My husband rocks.  He totally just made my night by coming to New Moon with me.  We were able to get tickets for a special premier showing at 7pm tonight(Thanks for the hookup Cayce!), and Dan, being the awesome guy he is, said he would come with me.  Well, it could have been because he found out that all of the other women going had husbands that wanted to go as well, so instead of a girls night out we had a cool date night with 4 other couples in our neighborhood.  What a blast.  Oh and the movie was pretty good.  Much better than the first.  Well, I should say it was better until Robert P. came back on…..hmm, I think I’m on to something.

Thanks Dan for a great Date Night!

Our Thankful Bowl

This last week at Cubs Kenice had the cubs play some great Thanksgiving Games.  The funniest was playing hot and cold with the boys gobbling like turkeys.  My boys came in time to watch the scouts play one for being thankful.  Kenice was kind enough to send home some candy corns so we could play it as a family, which we have EVERY night.  Here’s the gist:

1 bowl of candy corns (or other candy)

Pass the bowl around and have every person pick one piece of candy.  They need to say 1 thing that they are thankful for before they can eat it.  Pass it around as much as you want.

My boys love this.  Every night at dinner they ask if we are going to pass around the candy bowl during scriptures.  The ironic thing:  Connor can’t stand candy corns (takes after his mom).  So he picks out a candy corn, says what he is thankful for, and then gives his candy to someone else.  So cute!  So here are two of the things I’m thankful for:

My two future missionaries.  Oh, and another two things:

Sorry.  I just love this picture.  It looks like we have a new family tradition for the holiday!

Pumpkin Pie – Yum!

We have been having discussions about pumpkin pie the past couple of weeks with our boys.  For those of you who know Dan, know how much he LOVES pumpkin pie.  He was trying to convince the boys (and me ha ha) that their Mom was going to make pies out of their pumpkins we carved for Halloween.  Right. Huh.  Whatever.  Well, Alicia caved last week at Costco and picked up one of their pumpkin pies.  So here it is.  Dan is starting the indoctrination now.

Garrick wasn’t sure about the whole thing, but hey something to try and grab at. 

On a side note.  My family has a problem taking pictures.  It must be the blue eyes that make everyone sensitive to the light of the flash.  Trying to get a good shot is a pain in the butt.  Case in point:

No Daniel is not trying to act like a drunk.  And then after Alicia gets on his case to open his eyes, I get this:

Giggle.  I love this guy!

Rock and Roll Baby

Garrick is starting to get up on his hands and knees. Way fun to watch him try to take off.

Fall Clean-Up

With the beautiful weather this past week, I managed to get motivated enough to work on the yard.  The boys had a blast helping me.  In fact, I think that they were even more excited to take pictures of the yard.  So here are some random pictures taken the last couple of days.

Connor & Haden kept telling me that Garrick had a snotty nose.  I didn’t believe them until Connor brought me photo proof.

Beautiful isn’t it?

The self portrait!

Haden was hiding out so he didn’t have to pick up leaves anymore. 

Now it is time to have fun!

Whew!  We made it through the fall clean up.  I’m excited to have the yard ready for winter.  I’m actually looking forward to do some things with it next year.

Bump, Set, Spike

Last night was the first night of church region tournament.  Can you believe that every volleyball team from our ward made it!  The women started last night, and after a hard fought battle ended last night as well.  Oh well, it was a lot of fun.  It was a great year for volleyball and we did a lot better than I expected, though I wish I had done a little better (yep it was Alicia that dropped the ball on the match winning point – sorry ladies!).  Oh well, volleyball was great to help fill in the nights when I was no longer working.  Can’t wait until next season.  My goal:  Work on some cool team cheers!

Yes, we were wearing basketball jersey’s.  Team spirit and all that.  Thanks Will and Britta for sharing!  BYU Rocks!

I love this group of women.  Left to right: Britta, Keli, Heather(back), Cayce(front), Jolene, & yours truly.  We had so much fun.  There are about 5 other sisters that couldn’t make it to the game, and we really missed them.  Weird side note though – Looking at this group I realized I remember when every one of them moved into our ward.  CRAZY that it has been 9.5 years in this neighborhood!  Where did the time go?  Oh well, on to the Co-ed game tonight.  Hopefully we will have more success.  (can you believe that we actually have a co-ed team as well?  What a blast!)

Oh and another side note (related this time) – GOOD LUCK Krystal at the State Volleyball Tournament!  Get a good block in!

The Forgotten Holiday

Okay time to rant.  I can’t even begin to describe my feelings a month ago when I noticed an RC Willey sign on the freeway with obnoxious Page what’s-her-name and the slogan “deck your halls”.  First off - not even original.  2nd thing : WHAT THE CRAP!!  We still have month to HALLOWEEN.  Every year I think it can’t get any worse, and then what do you know….IT DOES!

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I love the food!  Those who know me, know that every time we get together as family, I want to know what food we are going to have and try to make sure we have more than enough.  There is something about the comfort of food and family that I just crave.  Still to this day I try to cram as much family time into Thanksgiving Day I possibly can.  (Thankfully almost all of our family lives within 2 miles from us)  I love everything about Thanksgiving.

So, I told my husband this morning I was already sick of the Christmas commercials on TV.  I ask the question of why are we skipping the holiday celebrating what we are thankful for and heading straight to the GIVE ME MORE holiday.  I mean, I know that Christmas has its own special meaning, but the commercialization is driving me nuts.  I don’t care that the economy is bad and businesses feel they need to eek out every last cent from the consumer they possibly can.  Can’t we just sit back for a few weeks and be thankful that we still have the best life and opportunities in the world.

So my goal this year:  I’m going to enjoy the Forgotten Holiday and remember what I am really thankful for.  Yea for THANKSGIVING!

A Waste of 3 Hours of my Life

And I am irritated about it.  After awhile of investigating I finally found a salsa recipe that the USU extension services recommends for bottling.  GAG!  I spent three hours last night chopping tomatoes and peppers in hopes that it would be a good recipe and I would get 12 pints of tasty salsa.  Alas, no avail.  It was the most disgusting thing I had ever tasted.  I literally threw it down the drain.  Let’s just say adding 2 cups of lemon juice to anything is simply over-kill.  Next year I think I will just bite the bullet and bottle something that is not “approved”!  Oh well, chalk it up to learning experience.

Success!! Halloween is OVER

Too much candy, too much excitement, too much everything!  But still a lot of fun.  We made it through.  Trying to keep up with my family is a chore!  The best thing about this year was that the kids totally got into trick-or-treating.  So they pretty much ran the show.

We finally decided on a Jedi and Bob the Builder.  What fun!  I had most of the costume stuff already in our dress-ups, so very low stress this year.  I caved and bought a costume for Garrick and myself.  Couldn’t resist.

Dan decided to throw on an eye patch and join in the group.  So we had fun actually dressing up this year.  Here is my gang!

We made quite the haul in candy.  Unfortunately it wasn’t quite an even exchange for all the candy I bought.  So I guess the cub scout treats will be taken care of for the next couple of months.  Yea! for Halloween. 

What the @#$% is my Mother doing to me?

I have to put up with a lot but come on Mom!  Why would you do this to me!

Okay, I have to admit I do look pretty cute.  Just promise you won’t pull these pictures out for my Prom date!