Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you. We enjoyed two feasts with family today. First feast was up at Park City with the Wrides, and then later we drove down to Sandy for a banquet with Hibberts and Smarts, hosted by my sister Jersh and her husband for their extended family. Up at Park City, we let the kids go swim to keep them busy, since we were all skipping breakfast. I made stuffing and a salad, which were our small contributions. We ate around noon. Wayne welcoming everyone to the meal. Corey's cousin Karen joined us this year as well!

Nancy taking a selfie of the non-adults waiting in line. 

Feasting - 

There were some seats around the table, where Corey, Wayne, Karen, Chalane and I sat, then the folded tables which Mark put up. Most of our kids took that area. The rest of the group were on couches and other chairs around the room. 

After most of us had finished our plate, we went around the room and everyone shared something that they are grateful to have learned from JeNeal. I said that I have a "Things I want to do when I'm a grandma" list, and most of those things on it are from things she did. I hope to follow her example, and then Corey interjected for our kids to keep their expectations low, cause she set the bar pretty high! We watched the video that Ethan made put together from the pictures that Jordyn gathered for the funeral video, put to music. We all teared up.

Then we cleaned up and the kids all wanted to go swimming, even though we had to leave in an hour if we were going to arrive on time. Katharine took a nap, and I took a quick nap too. Hyrum came in and said "Are we going?" Thanks for being responsible, H. He went and got people from the pool, so we left in a mess and were a little bit late. That meant that we did not go by home for nerf guns and hockey sticks. But better to almost be on time than to be prepared with the post-meal equipment. Jared and Jersh did an amazing job

Katharine at her own seat! She did fall through the back of the folding chair once later when we were playing games, but I kept my arm around her during the dinner. 

She is cute. 

She has started to insist on holding her own spoon and feeding herself this past month. 

That means messier shirts and stuff to clean up off the floor, but it's good that she wants some independence. After dinner Natalie took K to the nursery, where she lost a little stuffed dalmatian dog. Oh well. She liked pushing this baby in it's stroller. Saying "Oh no!" to something Natalie said...

Daniel helping himself to the frog eyed salad that we brough (there was a biiig bowl mostly leftover from the Wride meal. 

AND when Neil and his family arrived, we played gaga ball.

So gaga ball, is a game that is like opposite of soccer. You can only touch it with your hands, it cannot touch your legs, if it touches your legs you are out. If you hit it out, you are out. If it bounces off of you, you are out, and you need to try to hit the ball with your hands to hit other peoples legs. It's fun. 

Mel and I went home and got hockey stuff and the nerf guns. When I left, it was starting to rain, and snow was in the forecast. After we got back, Corey and Ethan quickly began a nerf battle. Corey had the gun with the small rubber bullets, so they both put on glasses. Ethan got Corey a few times in the face.  It was funny, tonight after we were back in Park City going swimming, Ethan came in to show Corey a little welt right in the middle of his chest. "I was wondering why it hurt!" Corey was pleased "Thanks for showing me that, Eth. I'm glad I got you once. I was feeling like a loser most of that battle, but now I feel a little better." No one used the hockey stuff, but the nerf guns were a hit. Corey left around 7:30 with HALSNOP in the van (which needs new tires) so he could get up to Park City before much snow accumulated. I stayed for a bit longer with JMEWDK. We didn't want to take two trips home to drop off the hockey stuff, so we were a bit crowded on the drive home, but then were set up good for the drive to Park City. We listened to Nate Bargatze's Hello World on the drive up. He is funny. We cleaned up and left an hour later, got up to PC around 9:30. Hyrum wanted everyone to go swimming. I kinda just wanted to go to bed, I think Corey did too, but he got in his swimsuit, so then I got myself and Katharine ready too. Out to the hot tub. Hyrum wants a picture of everyone. Mel and Alix were coming in, but I told them we were all going, even Dad, so they came back out with us. It was snowing, so that made it hard to get a picture cause I was worried about snow accumulation on my phone, but I tried to shield it with my body. Peter with the flash -

And without a flash. The colors here are more accurate.

I had my hair up, but it all got wet in the snow. Trying to get a group photo in the dark and with snow coming down was tricky. This was as good as we could get.

Hope that fulfills your expectations, Hyrum. Just a bunch of random heads. I took a short video but they all wanted a pic. I think the video might be better since you can actually see people's faces. After that photo, I was ready to be done, but then, since we were all there, they wanted to do some jump shots. Kids, listen to me, I know that that was fun in Costa Rica, but that was day time, in the sunlight at, in warm temperatures. THIS is night, dark, and freezing. Can we be done? Ugh, ok fine... We can do one big jump shot, but I promise it's not going to look the same. I started taking a video, as we were all standing there freezing getting snowed on. Almost 3 minutes later, we were done, yay, good memories. 

They all went back to the hot tub, I went inside with Katharine and Peter and drew up a bath in there. We warmed up in the tub until Corey came back to help me get K out and dressed. Then I got dressed, then time to get Peter dressed. He fell asleep waiting. Cute kid. I guess that's the sign that it was a good day.