Thankgiving

We had a GREAT Thanksgiving this year! For a long while we thought we were not going to do anything. It was our year to spend Thanksgiving down in Vegas with Craig's family, but we were just down there last month for his brother's wedding.

But it turns out that all his other siblings were staying up here in Utah as well (incidentally, all but one of Craig's siblings live here in Utah now. We really need his parents up here, too!!). So we decided to host a little Thanksgiving get-together here in our home. In all the years we have been married, we have never hosted a holiday dinner at our home, so this was very exciting!

We kept it simple with the usual treats - turkey, stuffing, taters, and plenty of pies:-) I was a little nervous about cooking the turkey, but it turned out to be very simple, and, I must say, it was the most beautiful turkey I have ever seen. Looked like something out of a magazine:-) I forgot to take a picture of it BEFORE we started carving it, but you can still see the nice golden color it had.

And the pies! Oh, the pies! All four pies were made completely from scratch - crust and all! Even the chocolate pie was made from REAL melted chocolate and milk. My new SIL Laurel made the yummiest apple pie, and I did the cherry, chocolate, and pumpkin. Yum!!

We had a lot of fun eating, playing games, eating, chatting, and eating. All in all, it was a fantastic day, and we all had fun:-)

A little about Halloween

I know Halloween is a bit in the past, but I have been pretty swamped and have not had much time to blog about life. And I suppose it doesn't matter, since I am not sure anyone but myself ever comes to this blog. So I write more as a journal for myself than for anyone else. But just in case anyne ever does pop over here frmo time to time, I hope you enjoy these little glimpses into our family life.

Last Halloween (2009) was kind of a bust for us. We really didn't do anything at all. No parties or activities, and Cameron was tired of T&T after only one street. Bleh.

This year was tons better! Now that Cameron is in school we have a lot of school activities to look forward to. I was a little disappointed that his school did not allow costumes. That was one of my favorite things during Halloween - wearing my costume and marching around in the school parade. So much fun!

Since they could not wear their costumes to school, Cameron said he needed a "Halloween" shirt, just for fun. I was hoping to make it a fun mother/son craft experience. Just one problem. Cameron is not really big into crafts. In fact, he does not really like them at all. So I ended up making the shirt, but he was still really happy to wear it:-)

The school did have a Fall Carnival and we went for a little bit. They have a few games and activities, but the place was PACKED, and we had to wait in line for 20 min just to play one 10 sec game. We had to leave before they did T&T around the school, but they gave Cameron a bunch of candy anyway.

Later we went to one of Cameron's favorite places - the dinosaur park! They had a big Halloween event going on all month, and we decided to use our family pass to go and have some fun together. It was a lot of fun seeing the dinosaurs at night. And there was TONS of candy! Cameron had a blast, and so did Mommy and Daddy.

Speaking of Daddy, his work had a little fun for Halloween as well. They all got to dress in costumes, and they invited all the kids to come and T&T around the office. Craig decided to go as one of our favorite TV characters - Chuck. I tried curling his hair, but it was a little too short to do what I wanted it to do. Oh well, he looked great anyway!

We did do a little T&T around the neighborhood, but our area is pretty lame. A couple of years ago we lived in an area that had TONS of kids everywhere - just like when I was a kid. But our area now is practically dead (no pun intended) on Halloween. A scattering off houses passing out candy, and a few kids here and there. Still, there was plenty of booty to be had.

All in all, we had a lot of fun, and Cameron brought home more candy than we could eat in a year. And finally, I will leave you with a few more pics of Cameron in his Buzz Lightyear costume, because he is just so cute!

Family Photo Shoot

This is the first installment of our family photos this year. We did a photo swap with another photographer, Shantell Urry. There is a big park right across the street from our house, with lots of cute spots for photos. And since I live here, I know where all the BEST spots are - especially the ones that not a lot of other photographers know about.

I was a little disappointed that the leaves were still mostly green. Fall has been sporadic this year - even while some trees are still green, others have already turned color and dropped their leaves. very annoying.

I think we must have been a challenge for Shantell. She had to deal with very low light, a wiggly six year old, and a little dog!

Here are some of our faves. Sorry they are so small. I tried to resize them, but then they wouldn't fit on the blog.

So this last one shows the creek where that body was found. My house is just up to the left, a little less the 100 yards. We actually tried going back to this spot a few days later to see if the leaves had changed, but they had the whole bridge taped off.