Thanksgiving 2023

We had a few days off work for Thanksgiving and drove over to Pocatello to visit family.  I've missed these family holidays while in Japan so I was eager to go.

Two of my brothers and one of my sisters were there and their families so there were lots of cousins to spend time with.  Somehow all the adults were squished onto one small table and the kids had all the room in the world.  

I love my kids getting to spend time with their cousins.

I didn't really take picture so most of these are stolen from Mary-Anne (thank you).  I really need to get back into taking pictures and videos.

We did a lot that weekend.  Joshua planned a exercise challenge where we did everything from jump roping, lifting heavy weights and a 4 mile run to the temple and back.  I will say that was one of my hardest four miles runs ever.  It was snowy and freezing and the roads were covered in slush so my feet were soaked.  There were huge wet snowflakes coming down on my face the whole time and on top of that they live up a mile long hill. It was rough.  Many of the kids beat me including, Tucker, Leon, and Penelope.

We did a little black Friday shopping, nothing serious just wanted to be part of the fun.  We had a pizza and movie night where we watched Home Alone.  The kids even put on a play planned by Hannah.  It was so cute.

They had some snow and got about a foot while we were there.  So the kids were especially loving that.  They built a snowman and had a snowball fight.

We mostly just hung out and spent time together.  It was great.  By the end of it a few of us had soar throats, including me. 

On the way home Bob and I decided to leave after dinner and drive the 12 hours through the night.  I really liked it.  There was absolutely no traffic.  Like pretty much no cars on the road after midnight.  The kids slept most of the time so...yeah, that speaks for itself.  We didn't' have to stop for food or bathroom breaks.  We got home about 5am and were able to go straight to bed for a few hours.  The only hiccup was that the freeway was shut down and we had to wait at a subway for about an hour and a half.  That was annoying but it really could have happened at any time of the day.

I am grateful for family!

Turkey Pokey

Our Thanksgiving started out with Calista performing a really cute Turkey Pokey.  The parents weren't notified until the day before so sadly I wasn't able to attend.  But because it was also a Japanese Holiday Bob was taking the afternoon off to watch Beatrix and was able to see the Turkey dance.  He showed a video of it to me.  It was pretty cute.  Now I just need to figure out how to throw away this Turkey costume without Calista noticing.  She is totally done playing with it, but if she sees it in the garbage she will then want to play with it.  Maybe I'll give it another week or two.

Bob and I both usually work on all the Japanese Holidays so Beatrix has gone to work with Bob a few times now.  I watch her until I need to work, around 11, and Bob brings her to work with him or takes a half day off.  Apparently all the coworkers love her and someone even brought her a pink hard hat and glasses.  She was thrilled.  I'm grateful that Bob's boss is supportive of Bob bringing her to work once in a while.

We finally got a chance to set up the tree.  Bob and the kids did most of the decorations while I was out of town, but I wanted to help with the tree.  This is the biggest house we have ever lived in and so I feel like we could use some more decorations, or even a second tree.  We are going to leave things how they are though.  There is a good chance we will be in a much smaller place next Christmas.

On Saturday we met with the branch and played flag football.  While waiting for the food to arrive a friend taught us how to hang sideways on a stop sign.  It is difficult, but I was also able to do it.  Tucker held it much longer than I could.

Bob and I also sat down and ordered the kids Christmas presents online.  All except for one say they will be here on time for the big day.  Maybe we will get lucky this year and all the presents will arrive early.

Thanksgiving 2018

Happy Thanksgiving!  

The holidays can be a little hard for me because I'm not used to doing these dinners on our own.  I wasn't really looking forward to it.  But we stayed home and did our own thing and it ended up being really fun.  A friend with similar feelings was talking to me about it and said that it is important to create a good holiday experience for our children without comparing it to our own growing up experience.  She was so right.  It was amazing how excited the kids were for Thanksgiving, while I wasn't quite seeing the big deal.  They never once complained about not having extra family around.  We took time for each child to help make a dish and they loved it.

Each day leading up to Thanksgiving Penelope read a quote to us about gratitude.  There are some amazing blessings we will be promised if we have a thankful heart.  It is something I believe in and am working on.

In fact, Bob really made most of the meal.  I felt like he was being a bit ambitious, but it he was able to do it all.  We had a Turkey, ham, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, rolls, glazed carrots, and cranberry sauce, not to mention three pies.  The kids were in heaven.  I really think everyone thoroughly enjoyed eating as much food as possible.

Before and after we ate, we worked on setting up Christmas decorations.  With Bob working on Saturdays Thanksgiving was really our only day to get outside things done.  I mostly worked on flocking our Christmas tree in the back yard while Bob set up the lights in the front yard.

I don't really think they are supposed to be up on that balcony, but no one got hurt so I guess it was ok.  It's more of a faux balcony, those are just windows above it, no door.  We don't have a ladder, or a place to keep one if we did, so this really was the best way to get the lights up that high.

All the Japanese people were looking at our house while they walked by.  I even heard a couple of them say "illumination," as they passed.  The Japanese do not put up lights on the outside of their houses, but they do have big illumination festivals where you can go and see the lights at a park.  I'll miss seeing lots of houses decorated for Christmas this year, but seeing our house lit up does put a smile on my face.

These next pictures are from Sunday, but I wanted to share them here because they were just taken when we were hanging out at the house much like we did on Thanksgiving.

I love this one of the kids playing cards.  I've often played Uno with them and work hard fighting to keep Calista away from the cards while she screamed.  The kids on their own had a better idea, just let her do her own thing and then she will be happy and we can play in peace.

 On Thanksgiving we also played a few games and even had just enough time to watch the movie, "Freebirds."  I cut out half way through to take a shower and finish cleaning up after the pie fun.

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving was not at all typical for us.  Living in a hotel far away from everyone we knew with barely any of our worldly possessions has really helped us to focus on what is important in life.  I still have so much to be thankful for.  I can't help but feel gratitude for my healthy family.  We have everything we need and more.

We spent Thanksgiving morning moving...no, not moving into a house but across the hall into a different hotel room.  This alone was a huge blessing for us because even though this room isn't bigger it has two separate bedrooms.  It is so nice to not have all seven of us sleeping in the same room.  Last night was the first night and it was a little strange to only have Bob and Calista in the same room as me.  Then I started thinking of how strange it was that I slept in the same room with my kids for so long that it felt strange not to.  haha.  The best thing is that now Calista can take a nap in our room and we can shut the door so everyone doesn't keep waking her up.

Once we were settled, it was surprising how much stuff we really did have in the hotel we started baking.

Isn't that the smallest kitchen?  The oven isn't even full size.  But I was able to bake a ham and a couple pies.  We went to a friend in the wards house for Thanksgiving dinner.  Everyone is so friendly that it really helped us not feel as sad being away from family.

We have already started setting up for Christmas. 

I know this gingerbread guy is a little gory, but he came broken and I'm happy that the kids decided to make it work instead of crying.

Someone even gave us a tree.

The stores are all decorated.

We did not do any Black Friday shopping this year.  There is one store on base that does it and I heard people camp out at 3am.  I can only imagine everyone at the same store shopping at the same time.

Thanksgiving Dinner and Shopping

We ended up buying our turkey the night before and trying to quickly defrost it before the big meal.  I think it ended up taking 2 hours longer to cook than we anticipated so everyone was hungry and more than ready to eat when the turkey finished.

The food turned out great and we kept eating the left overs for lunch and dinner all Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  We had some left on Monday but by then we were all tired of it.  Bob made there rest of the turkey into a soup and we threw everything else away.  The kids all loved the cranberry sauce and I was surprised that no one really liked the stuffing.  I made a frog eye salad that my grandma used to make.  People liked it but it made a huge batch that we didn't even come close to finishing.

That night we went to walmart just to grab a couple things on sale.  We were back home within an hour.  I told the girls that if we had a big house than we could get this bear.

Friday morning we went shopping to a few different stores.  We didn't leave until around 8:30 and didn't have anything really important to get.  We just like the fun of Black Friday shopping.  I was most excited about all the clothes we bought for our baby girl.  We didn't save any of the girls clothes so we pretty much need to start over.  It is fun!

Even though the kids had to go back to school on Monday Bob didn't end up going back to work until Wednesday.  He has so much time home I don't think he knew what to do with himself.

Game Time

For Thanksgiving this year we stayed home and had lots of time to play with the kids.  It sort of turned into a game weekend.  They loved all the board games and it was perfect to keep them busy while Bob and I went back and forth in and out of the kitchen.

Costumes are always going on at our house.

Tucker got really into Yahtzee.  He's played it before but this was the first time he really understood it and could play all by himself.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have so many things to be thankful for in my life instead of listing them all on here I'll post a few of my favorite quotes.

Thanksgiving Dinner

I have so many things to be thankful for especially this year and of course my family is probably the main one.  Since coming to San Diego I've got so spend a lot of time with the kids.  We don't really have places to be or scheduled things to do so we pretty much get to do what we want all day long.  And since we barely know anyone it is usually just us all day every day.  I feel closer to them and I think all this time together has helped us get along better.  Bob got Thanksgiving off work and it was really nice to just stay at the house all day and hang out.

I took a few pictures of us making dinner.

I think we only have ever made Thanksgiving dinner one time before because we usually go to my moms house.  I really wanted low key and easy so it was all pretty much out of a can or premade.  Below you can see Leon concentrating on the legos.  Its hard for him to get those pieces to go together the way he wants.

We ended up having some people over and it was fun.  I feel inadequate inviting people over for dinner because I'm not the best cook, but the company was nice.

Here I am cutting the marshmallows in half because the recipe called for mini marshmallows but we only had jumbo.  My hair was really frizzy that day because of the ocean and I'm not making my best picture face.  But it is the only one we took of me that day so I wanted to post it anyway.

And the kids putting the marshmallows on.

I hope you all had a great day too!