Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was fabulous. Spent with the people I love the most. Usually we do a big dinner with my mom's family in Las Vegas, but we have known for some time that it was getting TOO big and that eventually we'd have to branch out and do our own thing. This was the year.

Heather and her family came from AZ and we had a nonstop party for days. Movies, temple sealings, games, FOOD, four square, gorgeous weather and a bounce house. Couldn't ask for more. Here are some of our family pics:

Love these two

Cheesy, but still cute

Parentals with the single sibs

Granddaughters

Grandkids--all 13 of them (plus one more on the way--Heather's)

Grandparentals with most of the boys

Grandsons

Plenty of food (and rainbow jello)! Look at Heather's yummy rolls. Nice work!

This was the "small" Thanksgiving. 24 of us. There were 19 more in Vegas. Yeah, it had gotten a bit out of hand!

Allie led a couple of the cousins in a group dance. They walked up and down this cement wall doing all sorts of fancy choreography. Allie is wearing hand-me-downs from our cousin in LV. It was too funny and we couldn't stop watching!

The old man doing what he does best--studying the gospel. 

Table set up

Enjoying the meal

The bounce house that saved our sanity

Four square action--fun for everyone!

The little boys preferred the sand. Imagine that!

Yikes!

I'm out of storage space! What the heezy? So, for now, as a temporary fix, I am going to keep blogging on a public blog: traptrain.blogspot.com. You can add that to your google reader and I'll keep you posted as to what the final outcome will be. traptrain.blogspot.com

Snow Storm

Last week we had a big storm. Bigger than any we had all of last year. We measures 9 inches when it finally stopped snowing. And everyone had a little bit of fun playing in it.

Fam Photo Shoot

We had our pictures taken Saturday for Christmas cards and such. It's a day Jeff looks forward to with such anticipation and delight. Ha! But I needed to get it done so I could use a pic for the cards I needed to order this week (Groupon keeping me on top of things!). I'm not going to reveal any of the family shots (let's save a little something for Christmas), but here are some of the rest of the cute ones. None have been edited, but that's part of the fun.

Carter got kicked in the face by Kyla shortly after we got there, and he has a fat lip in a lot of the pictures. 

McKay was an ornery stinker the whole time, but we did get one cute shot.

Kimmy was our photographer's assistant (meaning, Jeff set up all the shots and the camera, and she snapped the pics and shimmied so the kids would smile). She's great. And I look tall and old here. 

Fat lip, still cute

I was quite bummed that my hair decided not to hold any curl that morning. Sometimes it just works that way. Even with a super hot curling wand that works miracles other days. Oh well. 

October Funnies

Carter, to McKay, on the couch: "Scoop over!"

On our trip to Albuquerque, about an hour away, Carter told us, "I gotta go peeps! Is there a bathroom in New Mexico?"

One morning, as I was making hot cereal, Carter asked, "Can I have some hot air balloon?" Apparently he was still thinking about New Mexico.

Kyla was really excited to check out When Mountain Lions Attack from the library. Beyond excited. She also got a Fancy Nancy book, and I heard her reading in the back of the van. "When Fancy Nancy Attacks," she read.

(There is still some debate as to who is the owner of this next quote. I think it was Allie. She insists it was Kyla.). We were reading scriptures one morning and Allie (or Kyla, perhaps) read the phrase "Jared was anointed." Only she said, "Jared was annoyed."

I told Carter, "come here, dear." And he told me, "I not a deer. I Carter."

We were planning a trip to the pumpkin patch one Monday night, and Carter asked me, "After we pick up the girls at tumbling, can we go to the eye patch?"

Allie told us, in the car, "I thought the moon was made of water." (she claims she was joking) Damon looked at her in complete disbelief, and asked, "WHO ARE YOU?"

Kyla was helping me make toast one morning, and I saw her eating the crust off of one piece. I asked what she was doing and she said, "the skin of the toast fell off, so I ate it."

Allie had to be up early one morning, as all the second graders were going to be on Fox 13 news, and when I went in to wake her up, she was already dressed. She told me, "I slept in my clothes. If I had waited until morning to get dressed, it would have been a disaster!"

Again, reading scriptures, I asked the kids if they remembered where Ether lived (hoping they would say in a rock or a cave). Allie guessed, "Etherland?"

Kyla had done some jobs for me, and was playing a game on my phone. Carter came in and asked to play the iPad. I asked if he had done any work yet, and he said yes. I asked him what he had done (knowing he had done nothing) and he said, "My Spanish."

We were talking about why there are so many Mormons in Utah, and I told Allie that the pioneers came to Utah in 1847. "Wow!," she said. "So Grandma Ruth was here to see them!" (my grandma is 80)

Halloween

So...we survived another Halloween.  And this was a very pleasant one, with no crying or fighting and wonderful weather. Kyla, who had lost Trick or Treating due to more stealing and lying, even got the opportunity to earn it back by doing lots of jobs for me and didn't complain about it (more on that story later). Kimmy came over to help the kid get ready.

Kyla's vampire poses were cracking me up

Posing with Wyatt, Gwen and Millie

And for comparisons sake...here are my three Hamburglars. 

Carter 2011

Damon 2003

McKay 2012