Happy Thanksgiving!

I love, love, love Thanksgiving. I think it may be my favorite holiday. This year it was with my side of the family at my house. This is a picture of the bathroom door. The good news is that we have 3 bathrooms, the bad news is we don't have a plunger...ok we do now cuz we had to go buy one to un-plug the toilet. Anyway we had about 20 people here and the kids slightly out numbered the adults, so we taped off the bathroom so no one would accidently use it. Funny funny!

Here is part of the crew. We were getting ready to watch UP. It is the cutest movie ever. I don't think we have ever watched a movie on Thanksgiving before but it was really cute and we had so much fun that day. I have the greatest family ever:)

Oh my, this is the last of the trip to Cleveland... Here is Jenny and her lovely husband Josh...he made up a game called Lets stick grapes in our lips and look like silly pants. It made us all laugh so hard that our bellies hurt.

On Jenny's birthday we went for a day of shopping, just the girls and we managed to find a restaurant, Applebees and we had a girls lunch. It was so much fun and a big thanks to Josh for taking the day off work and letting the ladies do our thing.

Look how cute the Birthday girl is...yes there are candles in the ice cream and for some reason that really didn't seem that odd until right now. hmmm

It is hard to tell in this photo with my junky camera, but this is the house from the Christmas story, the real house. The leg lamp is just inside the window behind us. Who knew that movie was filmed in Cleaveland? Not me, till I was there.

OOOOh, the city. Turns out this is probably the most windy and cold day the city has ever seen. Ok, maybe not but it was freezing. We are standing outside the Browns football stadium, ya can't see it, it's to the right but believe me it's there. Shortly after this we drove into the hood, the gheto, the slums and it was quite frightning. I wanted to go see it so bad and I feel very lucky to have made it out of there with out getting a cap busted in my head. It was scary, they even had bullet proof glass in the gas station... I don't even like guns!!

I had the best time ever and I am so happy to have gotten to go an this amazing adventure:) Thanks to Jenny and Josh for letting us stay in their house, especially to Jenny because she didn't even know we were coming....and especially to Josh because he did know and kept an amazing secret for two months. UNFORGETABLE!!!

Kirtland day in Ohio...

I always knew that Kirtland was in Ohio, but as it is well known I am not very good with geography and I had no idea that my sisters house was, was only a half hour or so from it. We decided to go see it and it was so very cool. A lot of the little town is not the original buildings but they did their best at recreating it.

This store however is the original, the original floor boards and walls, and the door that we were standing in front of is the very door that has always been there. The couple missionaries that gave us the tour reminded us that it was the original door and that it is the same one that Joseph Smith walked through personally. The picture above is the store from the inside, very modest but useful, not WalMart by any means but very cool. They had guns and buttons, fabric, thread and grains etc. Maybe it was WalMart.

The main level of the store is the store and store room of course and then some modest living space. The upper level is all "house". Up there was awesome, they showed us the room where Joseph and all his men would meet and where Emma did typical wife things, like make them food. Also it was the home of the room that housed the first School of The Prophets. There are 2 prophets that I have been very impressed with, in a way that I feel like we could be buddies or family, President Hinkley and Joseph Smith. Not to underestimate the power of the others, but there is something about them that keeps them both very close to my heart. There is no doubt in my mind that anything either one of them has ever said is anything but the truth, so to be in a room where Joseph Smith recieved revelations was VERY surreal.

This is just a photo of the "town" how cute huh. Even though these are not the actual structures that have always been there, they have tried to re-create it to be as close to what it would have looked like as they could.

This is a picture of the Whitman's "summer kitchen" it actually had a door on each side so they could be left open and let the breeze come through, wow. I for sure would have never cooked.

This is a logging place, they cut the wood that was used to build the temple right here. Notice little Jack is having fun on one of the logs on the bottom.

I forgot what this building was called, but they did stuff with ashes and stuff to make another kind of substance. It was cool, they kind of created a place to help guys have a job etc.

And here we were in front of the Kirtland temple, we couldn't go inside, it was closed when we were there, but it was still very cool to see. It is amazing they could build something like this so long ago. We had a great time and the kids were so good, they totally trooped around on a "grown up" day. We did go to a yummy, yummy place for lunch called Penn Station, Jenny's favorite. It was a good ending to a very good day!!

The Beginning of Ohio...

Well I am not too far behind with my trip, it has only been a week since I have been home and look at me already. Here we are on the way to Jenny's on the plane. We had SO much fun on there, suprisingly, usually planes are not too fun but this flight was exceptional. We were in the very back seat right by the bathroom and the flight attendants seat. We laughed and laughed!!!! I can not believe there are so many people that have to go potty over and over on the airplane. For some reason we found it humerous and we got real silly. We actually hi-jacked my mom when she came out of there once and threw her on her seat, the guy waiting in line to go in next was just a little nervous to come out but we were easy on him.

This is Jenny's backyard, it is so pretty. It is like a tiny forrest right there. It was such a nice afternoon, this is where we had lunch after church. It was the Primary program in her ward, a good surprise to us. Anyway, what better way to eat "after church" pancakes huh!!

After church and lunch we went to this very beautiful place called Whips Ledges. It is an awesome place for hiking around. There are so many trees and little trails all through the ledges. The whole ground was covered with leaves, it was hard to tell where or what we were stepping on a lot of the time.

Here is one of the giant rocks that there were to climb on, in fact my mom and Tammy never left this rock once we found it. Look at the background, I don't think I have ever been anywhere that there were so many pretty trees, here in the forrest all we have are pine trees, pretty but just not the same.

Ride 'em cowboy. Why not hitch a ride on the giant log in the middle of the trail.

And here are my mom and Tammy....still safely on the giant rock. It was a very nice day and like always, lots of laughs!!! I will post the rest of the trip later, but here is the first day.

The Ultimate Surprise!

New purse for my trip to Ohio...$15.00
Plane ticket to Ohio...$360.00
Snack in the airport...$5.00
Seeing the look on my sisters face when we showed up across the country to surprise her for her Birthday...PRICELESS!!!!
Tomorrow is my sister Jenny's birthday...birthdays have always been a big deal in my family so it was only appropriate that we make a big deal of them still. We planned clear back in September to come to surprise her for this special day and it was so hard to keep a secret for that long. Her husband Josh came to get me, my mom and my sister Tammy from the airport and Jenny was at the church for a Super Saturday activity and she was in the midst of cleaning up when we showed up like government spies and gave her the surprise of her life, check out this video to see what we did.

WELCOME FALL!!! This is my very favorite season. I love that we get to wear sweaters and snuggly wear and thank you to Stephens Mint Hot Chocolate- you are welcome at my home any time!!!

This however is not welcome...October 30, the day before Halloween, 10:oo A.M. No school today and also the first snow. In Idaho we are used to bundling up to go trick or treating but honestly the snow is not part of my fun!! The kids loved it though and managed to wrangle this snow man together in no time at all while I watched from the window sipping hot chocolate.

Oh what beautiful children I have. Maycee is a pumpkin princess?? And yes that is orange spray stuff in her hair and yes it could probably kill the one who applies it. I blew orange snot for a while. Yikes. Carson is a ninja-KIYA, he did however refuse to wear his hood that came with the costume and the awesome eye deals, oh and the knife he had to have for the costume...also MIA. Lincoln is a um, I forgot what he is called, but he is scary and so cute with all that face paint!!!!

They totally hooked up with the candy and they each like to organize then candy into catagories.

Carson likes to spread it all out to make it look like there is more. oooh

Maycee is really happy, but likes to make funny faces often. They are all very nice to share and they got some darn yummy chocolate candy bars.

All in all it was a good Halloween and now we can now look forward to Thanksgiving. HOORAY!

Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas!

This photo has nothing at all to do with this post, but I like to have something to look at and I saw this picture and I knew it would bring joy to all around. It is Jeff on his mission if anyone wondered. Anyway me and the kids drew us names for Christmas so here is the list....

Mom and Mike have Tammy and Dane
Tammy and Dane have Mom and Mike
Doug and Becky have Josh and Jenny
Pam and Jeff have Doug and Becky
Josh and Jenny have Pam and Jeff

Ed has Maycee
Tasha has Jack
Bethany has Bridger
Ryan has Sally
Alex has Zach
Mariah has Willie
Zach has Lincoln (p.s. Linky was so excited)
Bridger has Carson
Willie has Ed
Maycee has Ryan
Carson has Mariah
Lincoln has Alex
Jack has Bethany
Sally has Tasha

I hope you found the color coding very helpful. Christmas is only 92 days away (unless I counted wrong) so get shopping. ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho is Santa real? Maycee wants to know.