My blah-g

I have not been in the mood to blog. I don't know why, usually I like to blog and brag about myself and my cute family :) I've been in a bummer mood lately, plus I think I'm just stressed with the holidays coming and all the stuff that I have to do within the next week or so for the Relief Society dinner and program I'm in charge of (well, kind of "in charge" since technically that's my calling, but I am way underqualified to take the reins on this kind of thing). And I'm a little disappointed in my picture-taking skills. Maybe I'm okay (not great) at taking pictures when that's my primary focus like my previous post, but not when it's the day to day stuff. I see these pictures and I literally wince and grimace on the inside. I definitely need to take some classes to teach me what the heck I'm doing.

So anyway, Olivia has been really into making books lately. And I mean really. She has made at least 7 or 8 of them, which are just computer paper folded in half and then stapled. She has made them about Super Mario Bros., Tangled, what she wants to be when she grows up, her friend from school, and some other things. Some of them are based on something (like a movie or story) and some are completely random (like the one about how she lost something at school and then found it at the end of the day). It's the first thing she does when she wakes up and the thing she does most for the rest of the day after school.

This year we had Thanksgiving at my parents house. We had 10 adults and 11 children all 6 and under. We had my family, Celeste and her family, Kelli and her family, my parents and some family friends and their kids. It was pretty crazy, but I wouldn't say it was chaotic. The kids handled themselves really well, considering that they outnumbered us adults. We kept them busy with the Wii and some movies and tons of toys. I love Thanksgiving, mostly (well, completely) for the food. I understand that maybe I should love the holiday since it gives me a chance to be thankful and grateful, blah blah blah, but seriously, it's just a hectic holiday for me. But I loved the turkey and ham, mashed potatoes, funeral potatoes, yams with marshmallows (seriously, I can eat an entire cookie sheet of those!), green beans and stuffing and on and on. Plus dessert. Mmm... It's good that it's only once a year!

Olivia at the kids table. She is growing up so much (do you love her new haircut? She begged me for it and I finally caved).

Jack in the midst of eating all the marshmallows off the yams. Mmm... yams :)

Maddie would only let me take a picture of her if she wasn't aware that I was taking a picture of her. I can see a slight stubborn streak in her...

Nana and Papa sat at the kids table. Call them crazy. Hayden and Olivia on the left, Nana and Papa, and then Roman.

Tessa, Corey, Celeste and Bryan. I seriously can never get a normal picture of Bryan, who, by the way, is celebrating "Movember" which apparently means you grow a mustache to support prostate cancer awareness or something like that. He went for the "handebar" look.

Speaking of normal pictures... Jeremiah isn't very good at them either. Here is Kelli and Jeremiah. They moved back to Lakewood in November and it has been super fun having them here.

Adam and I. Can I just publicly thank Adam for taking a normal picture?

Jack cozied up to Nana while the kids were playing Wii. He was really tired by the end of the night!

Hayden, Bryce, Rix and Olivia playing Super Smash Bros... I think we thought that if they beat each other up on the Wii that they wouldn't do it in real life. Or something like that. I'm not sure how that worked out.

After Thanksgiving, Celeste, Kelli, Jeremiah and I headed out to Toys R Us at 10pm, only to find the line wrapped twice around the huge store. They were only letting a few in at a time, it was freezing out, and we calculated that we would get in about... never. So we turned right back around and went to Walmart where they had better deals anyway, put the stuff in our cart and waited until midnight to buy it all. We got some really good deals and I was in bed by 12:30. Sweet! I even got to sleep in the next day, go to some more stores (including Toys R Us without a line) and I still got everything I wanted on my list. It was a much more relaxing Black Friday than those in the past. No more 3am wake up calls for me!