Thanksgiving 2013

This year the thing I am most thankful for are these two people (and maybe the photo bomber too).  I feel so grateful and blessed to have them for my parents.  It's a blessing my dad is still here, alive, and doing as well as he is after having open heart surgery a month before.  My parents are the best examples of everything!  So this Thanksgiving was a little different, but also a little better.  We were still able to have it at my parents' house, but we insisted that we all bring the food.  Although we "made" my mom cook the turkey lol.  The day seemed to have more meaning to it and we were all a little more thankful on this day of Thanksgiving!

Cameron loves his cousins.  He was so excited to play games with them.  Sometimes it's hard being the youngest cousins!

Mackenzie's favorite part of dinner is always eating the olives off of her fingers.

We were all glad Janessa drove up from Dixie for the weekend.

we went around and said some things we were thankful for.  Like I said I am thankful for my dad.  I am thankful for the gospel in my life and for miricals and blessings our family has received!

Nobody was thankful for my rolls I made!  I pretty much ruined Thanksgiving dinner.  They sucked!  My first time trying to make rolls on the day that the roll is the most important thing (ok second most important) at dinner!  I ran a race that morning with my friend and came home to make the rolls.  I had plenty of time for them to rise, but after several hours they weren't rising, after sitting the pans on heating pads and cranking the heat in the house they still weren't rising.  I gave up and baked them anyway.  They sucked.  I guess I killed the yeast with too hot of water. 

My mom had the table decorated so cute, as usual, and the name plate/nut cups had cute cake ball turkeys in them.

Mackenzie ate olives for dinner :)

I love these two pictures....especially the bottom one :)

After dinner we all went out to help clean up some leaves and put out Christmas lights since my dad can't do any of that himself this year!  It was so nice to have so much help and get it done quick.  Cameron was so cute, he didn't want to play, he wanted to help.  So he raked leaves and helped carry the lights to put up.  He is such a hard worker and knows all about service at his age. 

The night before we decorated sugar cookies.  The kids made turkeys.  It's always a fun activity and so fun to watch them decorate with so much stuff they can't even see the cookie!

The pledge of Allegiance

Cameron loves the American Flag and always points them out when he sees one.  He says he loves America and "this beautiful world we live in".  Cameron is such a great kid!  He was so excited to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to us.  Apparently they had been learning it in school.  He had it memorized after two weeks of school.  If we are ever running late in the morning and I say, we better hurry and get your shoes on or we are going to be late, he says "oh no I hope I don't miss saying the Pledge of Allegiance".  

Super singer!

This kid loves to sing!  And it all paid off today when he got the "super singer" award in primary.  This is his second award and he was even more excited with this one.  I love to hear him sing.  He sings in the bath and when he is playing.  He makes up songs.  He sings real songs.  He tries so hard to learn the songs they teach him in primary and actually remembers all the verses.  He knows all 3 verses to "I am a child of God".  We sing the songs so much at home that Mackenzie even knows them and she says "second verse" when we are done singing the first one.  One of my favorite things ever is when he wants to sing Mackenzie a song before her nap or bedtime.  I always sing her a song before I put her to bed and sometimes he will go get his guitar and come in her room and sing with me.  Other times he says, "mom I just want to sing to her."  I love this kid!!

Redrock Relay 2013

I LOVE relay races!  I get excited just thinking about it.  I don't think there is anything much better than being in a van day and night for 2 days with 6 people and running 3 legs with no sleep and random food/snacks.  I would love to meet the person who invented these races and give them a high five!

 This was my night run....at midnight I believe....it had been pouring (flash floods) rain for the two hours prior to my run.  My teammates ran in pelting rain, which I did not have to do, but it made for MUD, MUD, and more MUD.  I was so excited for my trail/dirt leg because all the other ones were on the road.  Well, the rain made it a different kind of fun.  It was harder to run in the mud, slipping around, with only your head lamp and a few van lights shining on the road.  The mud added at least 2 pounds to each shoe.  I ran 5 miles in this.  Vans were sliding off the road and some got stuck.  There was a mile or two that I didn't see any vans or other runners.  It was so fun.  A little more difficult because you had to be careful not to slide and fall, but I did a 10 minute mile.

I

 I had started to clean myself off so I could get in the van and the decided I should take a picture....so this is only half as bad as it really was!

 The girls in my van.  We had a blast.  Pretty much laughed the whole time!

 The "vamper" was awesome.  I have never done a relay in something like this....we had a bathroom and the seats made into a place to lay down.  The girls who had never done a relay didn't realize how spoiled we were!

got the team number marked on my leg.  I am ready to go....my first run!  Sooooo FUN!

A pirate family Halloween

On Halloween day (after I picked Cameron up from preschool) we went to daddy's work to trick or treat.

the kids had lots of fun decorating cookies.  Cameron put so many sprinkles on his that you couldn't even tell it was a cookie :)

We were the only family that came this year so there were lots of cookies to decorate and way too much candy to get.

I got Jeremy his costume and he just put it on at work around 2:30 when the party was supposed to start.  So, the kids hadn't seen Jeremy dressed up yet.  Mackenzie wasn't quite sure what to think about his hair.  I think she was a little scared at first.  But then she remembered grampy's wig and how he "put lotion on it to grow."

the kids had fun going around to everyone's' desks and saying trick or treat.  It was just the beginning because after we left his work we went home to eat dinner and then head out to trick or treat around the neighborhood.  It was great weather and they had fun.  Mackenzie had so much fun running from door to door, until she got scared from the decorations at one house.  The life size skeleton started talking and moving when we walked up to the door and she buried her little face into my neck, she refused to even take a candy at the door.  So.....I got to carry her the rest of the time.  Then we went back to the house and Jeremy took them out the second half.  He dropped Mackenzie off a little while later so I could give her a bath and get her to bed, while he took Cameron to another neighborhood where his primary teachers and other friends live.  We had lots of fun this month of October, but I am sure glad it's over!  I can say that they got a lot of good use out of their costumes....wore them out.

Witch hunt

We had a fun day at Gardner Village searching for all the witches....

 Cameron and Mackenzie were so excited that Margo checked Mallory out of school so she could come too.  

 I found the cutest little witch :)

 Cameron had the most fun!  He gets soooo excited and has such an enthusiastic personality.  He would jump up and down and point saying "I found a witch....did we need this one?"  And he knew how many we had found so he would say "ok we only need 3 more, so lets go look over here because we haven't been over here yet..."  If it wasn't for his excitement I don't think we would have searched for all of them, it was pretty cold and there and Margo's ADD got the best of her.  However, the incentive was you got a cookie once you found them all and turned in the paper to the bakery.  However, we read the fine print and it said you got a discount on a cookie...LOL   So Grampy ended up buying us all cookies after we found them all :) 

 One of my favorite's was the witch riding her bike in the sky....

This was Margo's favorite witch....she saw it and said, "Mallory that looks just like you!"  We laughed for a long time.  We also saw a witch that reminded us of Grandma Wilson....ha ha

This was such a fun day!  It's always a guarantee that when I get together with my sisters and mom and dad we will laugh until we hurt.  There are always several inside jokes that we come away with after a day hanging out together.  Today we had fun!  Little did we know that my dad was going to have open heart surgery 2 days after this!!  After he had his stroke 3 weeks ago they detected a heart mur mur so they had his heart monitored.  He went in a few weeks later for a check up and they immediately wanted him to get a stent put in his heart.  They weren't able to get the stent in his artery since it was 100% clogged.  They decided they would have to do a bypass.  He was lucky he hadn't had a heart attack and that everything went well with the surgery.

Grammy's Halloween party

Cameron and Macknezie were so excited for Grammy's Halloween party.  Grammy tells the best stories and has such fun Halloween songs.  They loved it!

Off on a pumpkin hunt....to find a pumpkin to decorate.

Every year she finds some cute way to have them decorate their pumpkins.  

Grammy made some cute ghost bananas and pumpkin oranges.  They had some healthy snacks before decorating the cupcakes :)

It was fun watching Mackenzie decorate her cupcakes.  I think she got some icing on them....

Then it was game time.  They played several games and got chances to win prizes from the treasure chest.   It was another FUN party!  I am so lucky to have such a fun mom who loves my kids and knows how to make memories with them.  It means a lot to me that she enjoys being a grandma and takes time to enjoy her grandkids and everything about them.