Thanksgiving

This post is going to be without pictures and might even be kind of boring. Just warning you ahead of time. That is one of the reasons I'm not that great of a blogger, I think that each post needs to be something "big" and have lots of fun pictures, or else I can't post. I'm trying to change that frame of mind.

We took our camera to our Thanksgiving festivities, and took not a single picture. We did have a good holiday though. We spent Thanksgiving with the Gunnersons this year. Dorothy made a really nice (candles and crystal glasses, even) turkey dinner and we each brought side dishes. It was yummy and the company was great. We hadn't seen some of our brother and sisters in law on that side of the family for a while, so it was nice to catch up. Mark and Uncle Dan played football outside with the boys, which was fun. It was the first Thanksgiving with out our father in law and grandpa, Gary. He passed away in June. It was sad but we felt his presence there with us and it was nice to be with Dorothy and support her. She just wanted the day to be as normal as possible. It's hard when there's an empty chair where someone used to always sit. I like that quote that says something like, "there will be no empty chairs in heaven."

We spent the rest of Thanksgiving day and the weekend with our Bishop side of the family. Some of Mark's family was in town from Utah, and it was fun to see them. On Friday the brothers and younger boys played basketball at the church for a few hours. They had a good time and Cooper came home with a ping pong sized bump on his forehead. Tyler and his feet got tangled up together. Thankfully with some ice and Tylenol, he was okay. Kamber and I braved the crowds in the afternoon and went out shopping for a while. We grabbed lunch at Subway along the way. We both found what we were looking for, so it was a successful trip, and fun! We met that evening and Brian and Kamber's home for Papa Murphy's pizza, tons of dessert and good company. Aunt Lucy was even there with us. The cousins slept over Brian and Kamber's except for the older boys, who stayed at our house. Mark, Dad, Reed, Brian, Brent, John, Cooper, Tyler and Connor left early to watch the BSU game back at our place. Jen, Kamber, Alysa and I stayed back at Kamber's and played some games with the kids. We played, turkey, turkey, ham instead of duck, duck, goose. Fun times! After the kids went down the girls had fun talking and learning more about each other. Janice didn't join us because she was working on a "special project" at mom and dad's.

Saturday morning Mom and Dad cooked a big breakfast for everyone at their place. Dad got up at 4am to start preparing the food! Can you believe that?! What a good man. Later in the afternoon, some went to the movie Astro Boy. The kids seemed to enjoy it and the adults seemed not to. That evening some of us went to see the Christmas lights in downtown Caldwell. Some may laugh at that, but they are REALLY nice! The city goes to a lot of work to make a really nice display. They have recently redone some things downtown trying to revitalize the area. They've done a good job and we enjoyed walking around looking at them. It was really cold, though. Afterwards we came back to our place for hot chocolate, football and Bananagrams. You can guess who was doing what (boys - football, girls - Bananagrams).

We're all really tired, but happy to have spent so much time with family! Now we're gearing up for Christmas!