Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a very nice weekend! My niece, Jessica, Marshall and their daughter Quincy came over. We always love to get together with our
family because we can't help but be silly!:) Okay, so we don't have any pictures to portray all the silliness, but it was there!:) The dinner was nice too. It was my first year to make, most of the Thanksgiving dinner myself, in fact, our turkey was 21lbs, (the same size as Kailey), and turned out fabulous! However, the best part of the dinner was the week's worth of leftovers!:)

After the yummy food, we enjoyed a long,

Thanksgiving walk with lots of fun picture stops.

BLACK FRIDAY:

On Black Friday, I woke up at 3:30am, to wait in line while my friend, Michelle shopped for her daughter. All we could say was how crazy all those people were for getting up so early...and of course, not putting ourselves in the same category with them.:) Okay, so I must confess, we went to Wal-mart too. We could not believe how, again, CRAZY everyone was. For example, people were pushing and shoving to get a 4$ pair of PJ's, that I must say, were priced at their worth. It was RIDICULOUS! The deal of the day was a 64ct box of Crayola crayons for 1$, which was something I was looking to buy already for 4$ more. It was kind of nice not to really need to buy much else. It opened my eyes, once again, to the reason for the season, and thank goodness that it's not shopping!

My uncle Bill

My uncle Bill passed away on the 12th of November, from complications with Parkinson's disease. He is the one uncle on my mom's side of the family that I did not know very well but I am grateful for the opportunity I had to go to his funeral and learn more about the man that he was. It gave me a new appreciation for my family and our relationships. I realized, once again, that life is short and it is so important that we build strong relationships and memories while we have the chance.

Bill was in the Air force, so he had the military burial. I have never been to a burial like that. It was so powerful and made me feel such pride for the great nation, we have the privilege o be a part of. I am grateful for our forefathers and for the legacy they left for this great country of ours!Here is a picture of my mom and 3 of her sibs a the graveside service. I have to add that my mom and I had my 3 girls with us and they were such angels the whole day! My uncle was buried, close to the cemetery where my dad is buried and we had to follow tradition and visit his site, take pictures and get ice-cream afterwards. (I take pictures to document how my kids change each time we go, not to document the graveside changing):)

Fun with Friends

We took a weekend trip up to Eden, Utah a couple of weeks ago, with some friends. It was nice to kick back with our buds and to watch all of our silly kids. You might think that 12 people in a 2 bedroom condo might cause mayhem, but all the kids played so well together and had a blast exploring! We had a great time and loved the beautiful, fall weather and the nice crispness to the air. It felt like Thanksgiving weekend, two weeks early, except that we didn't have turkey.:)

We were able to go to the Monastery in Eden, and listened to the monks chant. It was a pretty cool experience considering that we all were in "The Sound of Music" together and got a small glimps of "Abbey" life from that. Okay...so maybe not, but it was fun to take the kids to a real monastery.

The monks make there own, flavored honey there and sell it. Well, being there brought back the nuns in us so, if you could just picture us in our black robes proudly displaying our honey...that would be great!:)

Disneyland

The Giles' family

2008

Disneyland trip

We were so happy to have our Disney Visa. It gave us many, in-park advantages, including a chance to meet some of the characters, and get a free picture with them. Well we happened to go in when Chip and Dale were there and the kids were so confused why Alvin and his brother, didn't have their shirts on. It made me realize that our kids really don't know many fo the classic characters, besides what we have said about them. By the end of the trip, we decided to collect those pennies that are in the smashing machine that put a picture on them. Anyway, Aubrey chose to have the Chip and Dale ones because they were the characters we got our pictures with. I guess we are going to have to rent some of the Classic, Mickey flicks so we can educate our children about the past.:)

Side note: We do love all of our children equally and did make a cool, Halloween shirt for Porter too, but when he realized it wasn't Halloween on the day we wore them, he wasn't going to have any part of it. At least he chose to wear an orange shirt so that he matched. He's so funny and, as you can see, having 3 sisters has not converted him to enjoying

Dress-up, unless it is the only way his mom tells him he can ask for candy, while trick-or-treating, on Halloween.

The kids had so much fun and felt so cool. Can you see that from their picture above?:)We were just hang'n around in Downtown Disney on our day off for 7 hours in all of THREE stores. We were so tired of shopping by the end of the day! Though Kailey's picture (below) was taken on a ride the day before, her look of "What the heck am I doing here" depicts what all of us were feeling by the end of that day.. This is the look she gave in most of our Disnyland pictures, unless she was sleeping! Lucky she's young enough that she won't remember being woken up over and over again to be taken on another wet, bumpy, noisy ride.

They had some great picture spots that the kids had a blast finding and posing by.

We loved our Disneyland trip!

A mother's day...

I didn't take it

I only yelled in her face

crying

mooooooommm, ______ bothering me!

Mommy ____, pulled one of my hairs out!

can I have a candy for a snack?

Can I have another snack?

I don't know where my jacket is.

I can't find my socks.

Do I have to wear socks?

Can you take Goobs out?

I don't want her in here messing up my stuff.and so on and so on...

I think I will keep a notebook with me for the next couple of days so that I can write down all of the cute and funny things the kids say. I guess I should remember those things instead. Okay, so here are a couple of things that my kids have said to me recently that have validated my role as mother:

"Mom, thanks for making me wear my jacket!"

"Can we read another chapter of the scriptures today?"

"Mom, I love you."

Again, I need to carry a notebook with me because I need to remember more of the good things.

New Sister

This is an ammendment of my las post. This is for my new, older, sister Jill, who has, in a short period of time, become part of my family here. She is awesome...and...so much like me!:)

(Is this better Jill, oh...I mean...sis?:))

Sorry it is candid, but I thought you looked so pretty that day!:)

Family

This time of year always makes me miss my family! Today, even though I love Utah, I am missing Ryan, Kris and the kids. We are sad not to be in the same state, especially now, that they have just had heir fourth little baby...(third girl). Ry has always been one of my best friends!

I am also missing my sis, Chelise! I am grateful to have been blessed with...at least, one sister to grow up with. I love her and I cherish all the wonderful, teary, and silly times we've shared! We have been mistaken for "TWINS", several times in our lives, and I just want to say that I gladly accept! My mom is always on my miss list! I will be grateful when she is retired and able to visit, at her leisure! I love her and I am grateful for her never-ending support, her testimony and her example in my life! I could not have asked for a better mother for myself!:) She is a "rock" and my hero! Shaun is on my mind a lot and I am grateful for the good "big" brother he has been to me! He has been the means of some very special experiences in my life that are priceless to me! Darin is a great example to me. He is a wonderful father and firm in the faith. I appreciate his new ideas and zest for life! (pictured above)

I miss Todd too. He is my long, lost brother whom I haven't seen for a few years because of the distance/miles between us. He is currently in Alaska with his family. I hope someday, we will see each other on a more, regular basis.

Today I have just told about my family, though I miss Jason's side too. We are so grateful to be living in closer proximity to some of them! We truly are blessed with our family relations! Even though , on this earth, we can't pick who our family is, they would be the ones I'd pick! We love them all!!:)

I

I love Halloween because it is the start of the holiday season! We have had a beautiful Fall and have been lucky that the weather stayed nice for Halloween. Someone must have been praying for that because it literally got 30 deg. colder the day after!

We always like to find fun things to do that are free, during the holidays and this year was no different. We went to a fall festival, a ward harvest party, an awesome haunted house Brett & Wendy did for their son's Eagle scout project and on a few nature hikes to see all the changing leaves and to count the deer. Side note on that is that I love that my kids love the outdoors and enjoy the same things that Jason and I enjoy! My little family ROCKS!

Some other fun activities were carving pumpkins with Annie and Ellie Bearden, the school parade and trick-or-treating with some of our friends. I should have taken a picture, but we literally had, almost a "kitchen size" garbage bag full of candy. After sorting all the candy in groups (as is tradition) Everyone got to pick 20 pieces + 10 more to be saved for movie nights, and the rest got taken to DI to share with all the workers. You may think, "Wow, how charitable" but it was only so I didn't have to have the temptation. There was really no "good will" intended.:)

The kids carved pumpkins with their friends and were so proud of them because they did them all by themselves. It was fun to see them work together. Lucky they now have "pumpkin carving" knives that aren't sharp like the kitchen knives we used to carve our pumpkins with as kids!

These are my boys with our Halloween "Eve" Dinner.

We have pizza night once a week and usually get Little Ceasers 5$ pizza but we splurged and got Papa Murphy's cool Halloween pizza. It was soooo worth it!:) YUMMY


Porter was a cool pirate again this year with some new "piraty" things to wear. All three girls were witches till Kailey decided that she didn't want to wear her hat, and "big sister" witches, turned her into a fuzzy, ladybug. I was a chef and had Aubrey be my "little chef" while we ran errands on Halloween. Jason decided to be a party pooper, and wore the costume to match. I love you honey, even if you didn't want to be matching chefs!:)