Happy Thanksgiving!

This week seems to have been the beginning of the marathon that I believe ends on January 2, 2010! Thanksgiving dinner was planned to be at my house with my parents and my aunt Marie attending along with my sister-in-law, LeAnne, and her girls (my brother had to work.) Thanksgiving means nearly a week of planning and cooking. I actually enjoy preparing Thanksgiving. My sister and I usually talk on the phone and compare recipes that we are going to try. This year, it seems to have snuck up on us because the weekend before, I went to Beaver to help celebrate my parents 40th wedding anniversary--Happy Anniversary. Before I knew it, it was time to start unthawing the turkey.

We had a great Thanksgiving day. It was pleasant and everyone stuffed themselves, then stuffed themselves again. My favorite part is going around the table and sharing what everyone is thankful for. I always enjoy hearing what the kids have to say. We usually get answers that range from family to toilet paper and everything in between. We did have a brief moment where James and Marie got in a bit of a political discussion, those who know these two can only imagine how that went, other than that, dinner was a success.

After the dishes were cleared, the sale ads were brought out. I was leaning towards not shopping on Friday but Lindsey asked what Black Friday was. After explaining the event to her, she declared that we must participate. My mom, of course, was looking forward to it. So, at 4:30 am, I began my day of shopping and standing in line. My day of shopping did not end until 6:30 pm that night with a two hour visit to Smith & Edwards with my dad. Those that are from Beaver, and have not been to Smith and Edwards, imagine a Variety Store, blown up 100 times. I did enjoy spending the time with my dad and I did find some good bargains.

Saturday was spent bringing in the Christmas decorations and wrapping the loot from Friday. Of course, time was taken out to stress over and eventually enjoy the BYU- U of U football game. Since that time, I have been decorating, cleaning, shopping, and starting to stress over Christmas. I want to enjoy the holidays, I really do, but I think I'll breathe a sigh of relief on January 2, 2010.

Matthew falls down and "breaks" his head!

Last Sunday I was talking on the phone with my mom when the kids came in and told me something was wrong with Matthew. I turned around and was greeted with the sight of blood pouring down the back of his head and soaking his pajamas. I quickly hung up the phone and tried not to panic. James was at tithing settlement so I was on my own (or so I thought). I took Matthew upstairs and attempted to clean his head so I could evaluate the damage. The kids told me he had been jumping on the chairs in the theatre and fell back, banging his head on a cup resting in a cupholder. The wound began to swell quickly and I was afraid there might be glass in it. The kids brought me the cup, however, and it was unbroken. I was bundling him and myself up to take him to the doctor when I had an impression to go next door and get my neighbor. My next door neighbor is a nurse. I rushed out in the blizzard and found Sister Jacobs. Her sister-in-law happened to be visiting her and is also a nurse. They agreed to come help. They arrived with super glue in hand. They quickly went to work cleaning the wound and gluing it up. I valiantly held Matthew's head as still as possible and tried to keep my composure from breaking down. We had a little mishap with the glue, a little too much was applied to the wound and seeped out into his hair, but other than that, he was as good as new. I was so grateful for loving neighbors who are so willing to help whenever we call and I was grateful for being watched over while James was away.



Matthew is doing great. He still has a goober of super glue on the back of his head. He won't let me touch it to get it out but he did finally let me wash his hair. I've decided we'll wait until the hair grows a bit and cut it out, in the meantime, he'll wear a hat. "No more Matthew's jumping on the bed (or chair, or anywhere)!"

Savannah Loses Her First Tooth

Savannah has been telling us for some time now that her tooth was "wiggley". This week it finally came out! I was putting away laundry and she came running to me to tell me that she had pulled out her wiggly tooth. Unfortunately, in her excitement, she dropped her tooth and we were unable to locate. The good news is, the tooth fairy is very willing to accept notes explaining such mishaps. The good fairy that she is, left Savannah a note explaining she was able to locate the tooth because, after all, she is the tooth fairy. In exchange for the fresh tooth, a crisp dollar bill (I guess you have to count for inflation, I used to get a nickel) was left under Savannah's pillow.

Trip to San Diego

The last week of the kids' vacation, Luke, Lindsey and I took a trip to San Diego. It was a different experience travelling with the older kids as compared to the younger ones. We left early on Monday morning and arrived in San Diego around lunchtime. Our first stop was to pick up a rental car. Luke was anxious to see what car we would get. He was hoping for a Mustang and was a little disappointed when a generic four door arrived. I cheered when the generic car came, I didn't want to be responsible for a Mustang.

Thank goodness for Garmin!! I have to say, the GPS systems are one of the greatest inventions of our time. It is so nice to be able to look up places and get directions right in your own car. I only wish we would have had one in the mission field, we would have saved a lot of time (of course, how would we have mounted it to a bike.) After leaving the carlot, we found our way to the Air and Space Museum. We spent the afternoon there. They had a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit that Jame and I actually saw in Rome. It was fun to see it with the kids. Da Vinci really was an amazing man with an incredible mind. Aside from his artwork, his inventions were ingenious for their time. The kids got to experience a flight simulator. I'd like to say they were good, but they weren't. I don't think I'll be flying with them at the wheel any day soon. I could watch them inside the simulator on a monitor. I could always tell when they were upside down because Lindsey's hair would stick straight up and she'd fall towards to belts. They said it was fun and I thought it was funny to watch them.

We headed to our motel later that evening. James had booked us in a Marriott with his reward points. It was on Coronodo Island. Island means you have to drive over a big bridge to get to it. I had flashbacks of living in Portland and having to drive over those bridges all the time. I told the kids I was a little bridgeaphobic. Everytime I would drive over those Portland bridges with the kids buckled in their seatbelts, I would worry about falling off the bridge and not knowing which kid to try to save. They thought I was nuts. I guess you have to be a mom to understand. After they laughed at me, I told them since they could unbuckle their own belts and swim, they were on their own if we fell off the bridge.



SeaWorld was our first destination the next day. We had a lot of fun there. Luke went on all the rides he had been afraid to go on when we went years earlier. In fact, because the park was so uncrowded, he went on them a few times. In the beginning, the kids weren't interested in seeing the shows because they were "dumb". (I discovered that 'dumb' and 'stupid' are common words in a pre-teen language, I immediately banned those words from the rest of the trip.) After the sea lion show, they were singing a different tune, Luke was actually upset when we were late to the Pet Show. Of course, Shamu is always fantastic to see. Luke and Lindsey sat in the splash zone and I took pictures from the dry zone. We headed back to the motel as the park closed so the kids could splash some more in the pool.




The next day we headed to the San Diego Zoo. This was probably my favorite place that we went (once we got through the snake house!) I had a great time walking with the kids and talking with them. It was a very relaxing atmosphere. Lindsey had set a personal goal to take a picture of every animal that we saw. Her camera battery ran out about half-way through so I gave her my camera. The zoo is so big, we weren't able to see everything but that was OK. The time that we spent together there was the real adventure.


After leaving the zoo, we went to the Science Museum. They were scheduled to have a planetarium show later that evening and then have telescopes set up for star gazing. We had a couple of hours before the show started and the kids used that time to explore the museum. They had a blast going through all of the projects. We got some good science fair ideas. Their favorite area was a room where a recorder would record the room for about five seconds then play the recording backward, forward, backward quickly and forward slowly. We did that over and over and over and over (you get the picture). When the show started, we headed into the planetarium. The lecturer was a college professor from San Diego. He told us how to find different constellations and then dove into an in-depth lecture on super novas and what happens when they collapse. It was everything and more that I could ever want to know about collapsing stars. I had to laugh though because I could tell the kids were really bored and I told them that was what a lot of college classes were like. I told them how I used to fall asleep in one of my Book of Mormon classes everytime. I took that class when I was a janitor at 3:00 am, and no matter how hard I tried, I would fall asleep in his class. They thought that was really funny and they were surprised I took Book of Mormon classes in college.


Our final activity before heading home was LegoLand. We had been there before when the kids were younger. There is a lot to do for younger kids and not so much to do for older kids but they had fun anyway. Luke has always been a fan of Legos so he loves seeing all of the things they build. We did go on a new ride called the Gauntlet. They sit you in seats and you choose what level you want (we chose the highest), then a hydraulic arm flips you around, upside down, and every which way. It was the craziest ride I've ever been on. If anything was freely floating around in my head, it's been shoved against something now. Just to give you and idea, before you can go on the highest level, you have to remove all jewelry and put your hair in a ponytail, I've never been on a ride that required that. Because the park wasn't crowded, we were able to enjoy this torture experience a few times. I have to chuckle when I think that we pay money to do these things to ourselves. The miniature villages are always fascinating to see. They actually have the new World Trade Center built in the New York City. I found that amusing, since the real one is still a big hole in the ground. Luke was able to get some fun Lego sets to bring home and we actually got free sets when we left the park because we agreed to do a survey.

Overall, it was a great time that we spent together. I realized how fast my kids are growing up. It wasn't long ago that Luke and Lindsey were running through the water park at LegoLand and going on all the rides that they are now too big to fit on! I think they had fun going together. They had a few power struggles along the way but most of the time they were good friends.