Full of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has come and gone...and now I'm Christmas shopping. Where does the year go? 

The week before Thanksgiving I was helping to prepare for a stake leadership training. We just got called as a new Stake Relief Society Presidency and with the meeting coming up we met often and were frantically coming up with something good. 

My job was to send out invitations, update the roster and create a Tech guide pamphlet for Relief Society leaders. Overall the meeting went well and everyone did a great job with their parts. 

I've been subbing a little more. The teachers can finally request who they want. I love it because I usually only end up going in about once a week. Enough to have something to do but not enough to get burned out. 

I had a girl that sent me a tattle tale note.  She folded it up and taped it and put it in my clipboard instead of telling me anything about it. Ha ha. There was nothing I could do because she didn't say anything.

Her note says "Dear Mrs. Boyer, can you tell Hadyn to stop chewing on his toy and stop talking"

The latest victim of Maddie. The dog likes to carry things around and normally she doesn't chew them up...but if she has something too long and it's good and chewy I don't think she can resist. Barbie is now armless.

Got all my jewelry stuff out right now, getting ready for a craft show this week. Its fun to create...now lets see if I can sell enough to cover the money I spent on supplies ;)

The week of Thanksgiving the kids were all off school so I thought it would be a perfect time to come up and see Angela and Robert for a couple of days. It ended up working out great because they needed the help to watch Ian while Angela was working and Robert recovered from a round of Chemo. 

Ashley came with me and was my little helper and the boys decided to stay home and hang out with Jeff. They had grand plans to lay around the house all day and play video games and sleep in. I'm sure for them it was a great couple of days of nobody telling them what to do :) 

Ian got a little sad when Angela first left for work in the morning, I guess that's pretty typical, but he was fine less than a minute later. 

One of the things that makes him happy is Yo Gabba Gabba. Ashley would watch with him...we watched every episode there is on Netflix, more than once. Most of the time he wouldn't sit and actually watch it, he just liked it on in the background.

We were laughing when one of the songs got stuck in our head "Don't say mean things to your friends, don't say mean things to your friends..."

Another thing that made Ian happy was Ashley...and snacks. 

I brought some snacks from home as well and he found those pretty quick :)

When I got there Ian was sick with a cold that had lingered and turned into a bad chest cold. Angela knew he needed antibiotics so on our first day of babysitting Ashley and I took him to the doctors.

When we were sitting in the office waiting for the doctor he found he could turn the lights off and on. That was the funnest game ever in his mind.  He didn't like the doctor however. As long as I held him and just turned him around to wherever the doctor needed to look he was OK.

After the doctor's we took Ian to a little park that we saw close by their house. He loved sliding on the slides with Ashley. We met some friends at the park as well. When he started running away trying to get me to chase him...we were done at the park. 

The next stop was picking up his prescription. There was a wait at the pharmacy so we went next door to check out the pet store. 

I didn't have a cart or a stroller, that was mistake number 1.  I found out that Ian liked to run through the aisles and get me to chase him....so I herded him near the animals. That got him to stop, hee hee hee.

He liked the fish and the birds and when he looked like he was getting bored I scooped him up and away we went to get his medicine. 

It's funny how out of practice you feel when watching a young one when your children are older. I very much enjoyed it but I realized how it's hard to get anything done, it's tiring and I forget that it just takes a second for them to get into things they aren't supposed to. A couple of times I turned my back for a few seconds and he was either on top of the table or turning the dishwasher off and trying to sit on the lid.  Basically I learned to keep him in my sights at all times, ha ha.

The next day we took Ian to the library. Robert was feeling well enough to come with us too! We ended up getting there just as they were making turkeys. Ian did a little bit of coloring and jumped on a few of the big stuffed animals and then we were off to a little petting zoo in town. When we got there I realized my cell phone was gone. I knew it was in my pocket at the library so I figured it just dropped out of my pocket. 

We drove back and it wasn't there, they even called it to see if we could hear it. No luck. Ian was cranky by this time so we went back home.  

For the next few hours I worried over my cell phone, called to find out what insurance we had on it and so forth. I thought to pray about it and then tried to relax and let whatever happened happen. 

After 2 unsuccessful attempts to get Ian to take a nap, and 3 stinky diapers later we decided to try the petting zoo again to try and tire him out. Ashley and I were leaving in a couple of hours so we thought we would try the library again just in case my phone turned up. 

I went to the desk and the guy that helped me before had it next to him. He said "I'm glad you came back, the janitor turned in your phone" I was so happy! I was sure to do a follow up thank you prayer ;)

By the time we got to the petting zoo Ian was starting to fall asleep in the car. Robert stayed in the car with him while Ashley checked out the giant pumpkins, bought a gourd or two and fed one goat. 

We then ran over to Rocket Fizz and grabbed some crazy soda flavors and I bought Ashley the giant gummy bear she wanted. I figured she earned it with all her help babysitting!

After a nice final dinner with Angela, Robert and Ian we headed back to Riverside. 

The next day was the day before Thanksgiving. It's always hard to come back after a trip and play catch up and for some reason I wasn't really feeling in a festive spirit. You know there are times that you think you are supposed to feel a certain way, and sometimes you aren't really feeling it. 

I had just commented that the one thing I was grateful for after last years oven fire was that I had an oven that worked and that I wouldn't have to host Thanksgiving this year. Not more than 20 minutes later the oven quit working in the middle of baking brownies for the next day. What!?! The oven isn't even a year old!

We tried tinkering with it but no matter what we did it wasn't working. I had 1/2 baked brownies, and lots of rolls I was supposed to bake in the morning!

I put a desperate plea on facebook to see if I could bring my baking to someones house in the morning. I got a couple of offers so that made me grateful. 

Since prayer worked for the cell phone I tried it for the oven, even if it could just work Thanksgiving day that would be great. 

The next morning I woke up and rolled out my dough for rolls and prepared to lug everything over to my friends house. 

1/2 hour before I was supposed to leave I thought I'd try and turn on the oven again. By some miracle it worked! I quickly fed everything into the oven without turning it off until it was all baked. 

Now I was truly grateful for the oven! 

I don't know what it was but since then it's been working every day. 

It's it funny that it takes us losing something, or thinking we are losing something to really feel grateful for it. 

Thanksgiving was at Grandma and Grandpa Nelson's this year. They had a big table in the garage to eat on...we could never do this in our garage...people would probably have junk falling on them ;)

I really appreciated my mother and father in law for hosting because I knew that it was a lot of work!

Some of the football watcher crowd (with Taylor texting in the background)

The food was good and plentiful as always! Yum!

Our favorite part of the night is playing games!

After dinner is done we put the table away and gather the chairs in a circle and play games. 

Steve added a new one this year. 

It was like a cross between telephone and charades. 

Playing with all ages meant we got to act things out that you wouldn't want to have to act out, like potty humor...

and have everyone laugh at you....

or laugh with you...it's all in good fun!

That night Jeff and I braved Khols across the street for their midnight black Friday deals. We bought like 3 things then got out of there fast. Craziness! Jeff was whacked in the head at least 3 times and as we were walking back to our car we watched someone slam into a parked car as they were trying to leave the parking lot. Wow enough black Friday for us!

Friday we went skating with family. It was Jolene's birthday and Sharon and the girls drove down and Jolene had a couple of friends come and we all met at the skating rink. 

(I know this is a horrible picture but it was the only one I had)

We practically had the place to ourselves for a long time. Sweet! 

The kids got to race each other, they held hands and made a big chain and Jolene and Ashley even won one of the games and got their own cotton candy. 

Saturday we pulled out our Christmas decorations, sweating in the heat. Sheesh it wasn't feeling anything like Christmas yet, but up the decorations went.

It reminded me of those years growing up when I would get a winter coat for Christmas and then we'd go outside wearing it to play and we would be sweating to death in it! Only in California.