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! 

Colors Come a-Callin!

Finally...November hits and so do the tree colors!  We don't get very many vibrant tree colors here, but there are still some pretty spots.


A date night one date.  Dessert and fried food is always good...


We did a temple trip to Philadelphia the first weekend in November.  We hit up Trader Joe's on the way home and stocked up on Christmas goodies and gifts.  Love their peppermint Joe Joe's! And in Front Royal, everyone and their cat was out to see the fall colors.  We were stuck in Front Royal for ONE HOUR because people were trying to get up to Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Par.  SUPER CRAZY.




A little Sunday treat.


Flag duty after church.


This tiny doll house piano was at Costco.  The key sticker is on backwards, ha ha.


Lee and I voted!


The Christmas goodie shelf is stocked and ready for the holidays!


I had a goal to finish reading Anne of Green Gables before we went to Prince Edward Island a couple of years ago.  Well I never did finish and am slowly finishing with the kids.  I think we have just a few pages left.  Love that story, even though Lucy uses MANY words I have never read or heard of before.


For a date Shanna wanted me to plan it.  Ice cream sundaes and Rummikub!


I finally gave blood after a couple of years or so.....


Also our Christmas cards came!!! I was gun-ho on getting lots of holiday prep done because November 4th I was called as the Relief Society president.  AHHHH!!!!!! I knew for a couple weeks before it actually happened.  Lee found out on a Tuesday morning what my calling was and I didn't find out till Wednesday evening. I kind of figured it was Relief Society president...


Another holiday prep...I ordered popcorn cobs for my friends to pop up.  I thought it would be a fun, different gift.


Scouts had a campout near the C&O Canal so they could do a bike ride. It was super cold outside! Clark, Cal and Lee participated.  We had a crazy schedule that day.




My first Sunday as Relief Society president...I set up the room but left right after the sacrament because Haley was home sick with Strep.  But that Sunday Lee was released.  It was quite the shock!  Right before sacrament meeting President McCleve, a counselor, asked Lee to be on the stake high counsel.  We thought Lee would be released the first part of December, but he was released right then during that meeting.  When I walked out of the chapel, I heard Lee speaking longer than normal over the loud speaker and realized that he was asked to share his testimony.  So I stopped and listened to that.


They used chlorhexidine to cleanse my skin before inserting the needle for the blood donation.  It gave me an awful rash. And it still keeps coming back and back.  It's so weird.


Haley has been decorating her door for the different holidays, so cute!


Cal and I went on another field trip...to a dairy farm!


At the end we all got to choose chocolate or strawberry milk!






We had a little bit of snow in November.  I like the tiny snowmen the kids built.


Sadly there was an ice storm as well.  Many people were without power for 3-4 days.  Thankfully we never lost power-it just flickered off and on again.




School was canceled for a couple of days.  Clark built a fire outside one afternoon.








We did a sock folding race one night.  This is what I found...


My friend and I (mainly my friend!) did a birthday party for another friend. We had pie and visited. What a fun night.


Not sure about this one...one of my children took a picture of me.


My ugly sweater invites came as well! YAY!


I never got a picture, but my MTC mission companion, and later mission companion came and visited me.  It was really fun hanging out with her.  We were going to go on a hike one afternoon, but Shanna said she had too much homework.  We went the next day after my companion, Millie, had left.  Wish she could have come with us!  I was asked to speak in church and it was fun having her there with me for that. We ended up going on the hike.  I took the kids with me.  We went to a favorite...Bear Fence.














Lee's mom sent him some fun momentos from his childhood.  One were some old teeth.  Teeth gross Lee out and I came up with the idea to send them to his brother for Christmas, haha.  So we did.  We are so nice.