Ugly Sweater & PJ Fun!

Since Thanksgiving fell early this year, we opted to have our Ugly Sweater Party early as well, which was awesome!!! 

And of course before the party we find last minute things to do around the house.  Lee installed a new light and helped me recover the dining chairs.




We had a terrific turnout with about 27 people I think!  Lee and I gifted dried bugs this year for our white elephant gift.  Lee and I were both under the weather, so I would sneak off to cough it out upstairs with the kids.  Ugh.  I hope next year I'm healthy for the party! We had a great time though.  I made two yummy treats and completely forgot to put them out....mint chocolate chocolate-chip cookies and lemon bars. 




We had fun partying and staying up late.  The last couple to leave was about midnight.  We decided to clean-up and just drive to Lois' right then since we were going to the temple.  We stopped and slept for a little bit on the way.  But we got to Lois' about 4:45am and left soon thereafter.  We still made it to the 7am session in Philadelphia!  We spent the day with the Heits so we could see Reed in Peter Pan.  That was really fun! Oh and I also took the girls to their brain study follow-up.  They each received $50 and myself $75.

At Peter Pan with the Heits and Bartholomews!


Aaarrrrrrrr..................


I had Elden fix a pair of his pants.  Lee is reading a book where the author's mom made him do things himself, like fix his pants when he was a kid.  Though I didn't do exactly as his mom (she basically said, figure it out) I guided Elden through the process.  He was quite pleased with the result!  Sadly they re-ripped.  But he got to wear them a couple times more!




We LOVED getting the gifts together for Lee's team members this Christmas!


Uncle Sheldon sent us a game!  It will be fun to play it!


What a fun surprise.  Thanks Sheldon!




We had a fun snowfall in December. 



And of course it melted pretty quickly.  Clark marched in a holiday parade.








After the parade Lee rented a Bird scooter for a few minutes.  Can't wait to use them when it's warmer out!


We all had to take turns....


More holiday fun continued with our ward Christmas breakfast.  You could wear pjs, and you bet we did!  Games, singing from the primary and the whole group, visiting and a visit from Santa completed the fun event.




Our team won one game and Cal won another!


The primary also used bells which was so cute!















I love snow at night.  Happy Holidays everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving! The Holidays Begin....

AHHH!!!  The holidays have come!  YAY!  We had a lovely Thanksgiving, and we hope you did too! 

Haley strikes again and made a cute sign for her door. 


Pie time came!  I made several pies for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. 


We headed out to Mississippi for Thanksgiving the evening before and drove through the night. First we went to our friend's house for his 40th birthday.  


We had to stop at the post office to mail our Christmas cards!


We arrived about 8:30am!  It's nice because my sister has a park right across the street from their house.  The kids loved going there.


We had a yummy Thanksgiving lunch at the church. 






Mmmm....pie!




We had our annual Thanksgiving Day races!


Jon and Joseph tied for first and Clark was second!


Ethan my nephew made a portable gaga pit for his Eagle project.  We had fun playing gaga together.






Black Friday we did a little shopping and also went to the field by the YMCA and played flag football.  It was really fun and the grownups were great with letting the kids play as well.




Saw this at the Dollar Tree there...


I snagged a few deals shopping, which was fun!  And we celebrated Mike's birthday!






And we played gaga again another day.


Fun with the babies!




The last big event was Keith's baptism.  I am glad we were able to be there.  Elden got to speak about baptism as well.  He did a great job!












More baby fun...love those snuggles.




Well the trip became super exciting after the baptism!  We left around noon or so to head to the Bryson City, NC area.  Lois, Darrell and my parents and families and us, decided to go see my Uncle Steven and Aunt Susan on their mission.  On the way there Lois and I got ahead of Darrell's family.  Shanna was with Darrell and we had Eric.  We were spending the night in the same town so we didn't mind splitting up.

We stopped at a rest area to eat dinner.  While there we found out that Darrell's van had a flat tire. No big deal as they would get in late to the hotel that night.  Finally they got the spare on but soon they found out the spare had a leak. About an hour later (and we kept getting farther and farther apart) their spare completely fell off their van, damaging their axle. I am not sure about all the details, but long story long, they were stranded in Georgia, with Shanna, from Saturday night to Tuesday late afternoon (and for Stacie and my parents and their younger kids Wednesday morning).  PepBoys apparently did a horrible job not fixing their van, and even wrecked it, and ended up paying for two one-way rental vans for Darrell and Stacie to drive home.  And they did not charge for any labor that had been performed.  A family in a local ward took them under their wings by feeding them and even letting them spend a couple of nights at their house. 

In the meantime, we had fun visiting Uncle Steven and Aunt Susan and loved having Eric along.  I would not be surprised if he became an apostle someday.














We had a lot of fun hanging out with Eric.  We went to the coin store on Tuesday.


Did a little jaunt to a park one night.


Wednesday morning at about 2:45am I met Darrell at a gas station.  We swapped kids and got Shanna back, yay!  Here is their minivan rental courtesy of PepBoys.  Darrell still had another 3 hours to go but made it back safely.  They all had to wake up about an hour after arriving home to go to school, seminary and work. 


We had an awesome Thanksgiving.  Quite the ending!