Thanksgiving

We had a fun Thanksgiving this past week. In Pocatello the children get the entire week off of school. We did too at the university, so we had a ton of time together as a family. It was great. Monday and Tuesday were pretty low key - we did some shopping, went to the library, had a read-a-thon, played a bunch of games, and just spent time together. We also got to watch a few new movies for the children throughout the week. They watched Nine Lives which is a newer movie and we all thought it was pretty good. They also watched The Never Ending Story for the first time. They really liked it, which Rebecca and I thought was cool because we had liked it a lot when we were growing up.

On Wednesday we tried to do as much of our cooking as possible. I think we got all of the food either done or prepped so on Thursday we just had to heat things up. By the way, having a double oven just made the heating up go so much more smoothly than in previous years. We had our turkey going at one temperature and then the rolls and other things going at another temperature at the same time.

Nathanael and his family joined up Wednesday afternoon. We were so glad that they were able to come. For the rest of Wednesday night we mainly played around and spent some time catching up.

Nathanael and I thought about going to find a turkey bowl game on Thursday morning, but we decided against it. I hadn't heard about anyone in the ward getting together to play and we could have searched around I am sure and just found some random guys playing, but it was pretty cold out and so we just played a game downstairs with the children. Some of the children opted for Lego building instead, but for those of us who played it was pretty fun.

Caleb arrived that afternoon and he did a great job at occupying the children while we finished up with the meal. Lets see, we ended up having turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, a corn and bacon dish, rolls, a green jello dish, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, stuffing, pumpkin pie, apple pie, oatmeal pie, and Caleb brought these amazing drumsticks that were covered pretzels with rice crispe treats on top. It was a real feast.





For the rest of the evening we played a few more games and looked at all of the Black Friday ads.

On Friday we woke up and went out shopping. We are not the type to try to get all of the doorbuster deals at 2 am, but instead we like to go at 8 or so and just experience some of the frenzy and see if there are any amazing deals left.

That afternoon we went for a hike in the hills behind our house and played some basketball and had some fun with a new nerf gun that Ethan purchased. Our children just loved hanging out and playing with their cousins as well as their Aunt and Uncles.

We are all sad that the long break is coming to a close, but it is only three more weeks until we are off again for Christmas!

We have so much to be grateful for. Last year our house was still being built and although I was able to go back to Washington for a visit, it was hard being away from Rebecca and the children so much. All of the years before that in Alaska we were so far away from all of our family. This year we were all together in our own home and we were close enough to have family come and visit. We have wonderful children, a great job, and testimonies of our Savior Jesus Christ and the restored gospel. Sometimes Rebecca and I talk about what we have in our time compared to 200 or so years ago. When we think about it, we imagine we may be a little embarrassed when we meet people from all the different generations of the world - just because we have so much and still we are sometimes not satisfied with what we have. It really motivates us to do the best we can given our blessed circumstances.