Thanksgiving Etc.

I swear the time is just speeding away from me and I can't keep up! OK, so back to Thanksgiving. It was fantastic. Low key, nice weather (the kids all played outside for awhile), great company, and amazing food.  We had dinner with my Aunt Barbara, Uncle Terry, and my cousin Jessica and her family. I brought my traditional green bean casserole and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. The rest of the meal was just delicious. I'm so glad that the Davis clan always welcomes us for this holiday. I have so much to be thankful for and it was wonderful to have a nice, slow day to focus on that.

I didn't do any black Friday shopping. At least not in the stores. I did almost all of my Christmas shopping online though and scored some great deals.  By my calculations I ended up spending $12 more total on all the items I wanted by shopping online than going to the stores, but I consider that well worth the time and aggravation of fighting crowds. Have I mentioned how much I love Amazon?!? Needless to say, Christmas shopping is done and done. Still waiting for a couple last packages to arrive, but I've even already started wrapping, so I'm in good shape. :)

Instead of shopping we decided to take the day and go out as a family. We had a Groupon to use at a fun bowling alley in Park City, so we took our time getting ready then headed up the canyon and got there around noon. I was driving and got pulled over just a few miles from our Park City exit. I felt so bad, but I was speeding, so it wasn't undeserved. Also I haven't gotten a ticket since I was 16, so I figured I was due. I just hoped it wouldn't ruin our day together. Lucky for me the officer ended up letting me go with a warning to watch my speed. I must have inherited my mother's gift for talking her way out of tickets. I played up the whole "out as a family" angle. But I still made Ian drive home.

We had a blast bowling and eating pizza and cookies (well Talia didn't eat pizza, but cookies and root beer for lunch never killed anyone right?). Weston beat all of us and even broke 100 without using the ramp! I was impressed. We managed to fit one and a half games into our 90 minutes. The timing was perfect for Beckett too because his movie ended just as we were leaving. It was cold but sunny, so we decided to wander around the shops for a little bit and stretch before driving back. The kids were so funny playing in the snow. This was before we had snow sticking to the ground at home. We had a nice walk and then drove back down the canyon.

We decided to stop on our way home and get a Christmas tree. We went to Home Depot to pick out a Noble Fir. It was kind of anti-climactic, but I was glad we didn't have to pack everyone up for that little errand later in the day since we were all pretty worn out.

We had a little down time when we got home before I took Talia to her first friend birthday party! She was pretty excited and did well for being so young. She didn't want me to leave though, so I stayed and made small talk with my friend's family. It was fine though and I'm glad Tal had the opportunity to do something like this.

With Thanksgiving over it was time to get ready for Christmas! I decorated and started baking chocolate bread. Davin brought home a paper chain countdown project.

Ian went to Ireland for almost a week to do a video shoot for a client. It was a long week without him, especially because the weather finally caught up to us. It snowed and snowed and was freezing cold. We couldn't hardly go anywhere even if we wanted to. I got a sitter on Thursday night so I could go to a little girls' night out for a couple friends who moved out of our ward. It was such a nice break! After the dinner I went grocery shopping. Friday night Mel and Brad came over to keep me company, which was way fun. They brought me Cafe Rio and DP. Brad fixed the smoke alarm that had been going off randomly all day. Then we Face Timed with Mom and she showed me how to make the big bow for the top of my tree. It was a fun night with other adults. :)

I felt like I had it pretty together until Saturday when I saw it was snowing again and it was going to be a looong day cooped up with all the kids by myself. At least the boys enjoyed getting to go out and play in all that fresh snow! Sunday was church, which is always kind of rough. Ian got home after the kids went to bed Sunday night. I'm glad he had a fun, productive, safe trip, but I'm mostly glad to have him home!

The month of December is, of course, flying. Christmas is next week! Crazy! I have tons of wrapping to do and one more batch of chocolate bread to make. Other than that we are watching Christmas movies, doing our advent calendars, listening to John Denver and the Muppets, and enjoying the season.