Thanksgiving Break

This year I made my first Thanksgiving dinner.  I'd never cooked a turkey before.  I was afraid mine would turn out like the one on Christmas Vacation.  Everything actually turned out great.  Blake is pretty picky and doesn't like stuffing, cranberries, or yams, so I didn't bother making any of those.  We had turkey, potatoes and gravy, corn, green bean casserole, rolls, peach cobbler with ice cream (Blake's favorite dessert), and Jayce made a chocolate cream pie.  I was going to make homemade rolls, but we were stuck at the doctor's office for two hours, so we had to have rolls from the store. 

I let Jayce make a pie all by herself.  She is a chocaholic, so she chose to make a chocolate pudding pie with an Oreo crust and she decorated the top with Oreos.  She was so proud of herself.

This was Blake after eating.  I'm lucky to have Blake because he always help clean-up and he likes to make mashed potatoes for me.

We decorated our Christmas tree a couple days before Thanksgiving because we were going out of town later that week.  I've been fighting with Blake and Jayce to change the lights to white, but I always lose the battle.

Footis loves to take naps under the tree, but only when the lights are on.

The girls and I visited Utah for the last part of Thanksgiving break.  Blake couldn't get the time off work, so he stayed home.  We made it just in time for my mom and Kevin's Thanksgiving dinner, which is always amazing.  We had pies at Granny's later, and then Jayce had a sleepover with her cousins on the Yak side.  My dad was visiting as well, so we had a great time with all of our family.  It's kind of hard to divide the time so we can spend time with everyone, but we tried our best.  I feel bad I didn't take many pictures, though.

Jayce's cousins all worship her and think she's the coolest kid.  In this picture they all wanted to sit next to her, so they made a circle around her.

Jayce adores her uncles Jacob and Isaac.  Claire was kind of scared of them at first, but she liked them after a couple days.

 Granny had her Christmas party that weekend so Ryan's family and mine could attend.  It was a lot of fun, but sad not to have Poppy there complaining about how much money Granny wasted.  He always loved the parties anyways. :)

Sprained Ankle

Jayce had her first gymnastics injury a couple weeks ago.  She jumped of a big cheese mat and rolled her ankle.  She was a tough girl and finished gymnastics.  She told me she hurt it, but didn't complain much at all.  I really didn't think much of it, because she didn't really say anything.  The third grade was having a field trip the next day to see The Nutcracker ballet, and she was really excited about it, so she didn't want me to not let her go.  After school on the field trip day, she showed me her ankle and told me it was actually very painful.  I couldn't believe how swollen it was.  We took her to the doctor and he said it was a really bad sprain.

Don and Renee Colorado Visit

This Halloween Blake's mom and dad came to visit us.  They arrived the night before Halloween.  The girls were so excited to spend time with them.

Papa Don and Grandma went to Jayce's Halloween parade and class party with us.  It was a lot of fun to have them there.

 Claire wanted to be in the parade with her big sister.

Later that night we went to the city's Halloween party.  The girls had a great time.  Then we went home and ate chili.  It was the first chili that I've ever made, and it turned out really good, but it was sad to not have my mom and Granny's chili this year.  After dinner, Blake and Papa Don took Jayce out trick-or-treating.  Claire was too scared to go because of all of the masks.

 Blake as Jigsaw

 Renee, Blake, Jayce, and Don- pretty scary!

 Claire loved cuddling with her grandparents.

The next day we went to the reservoir, the riverwalk, and later to Colorado Springs where we walked around Garden of the Gods and ate dinner.  It was a really fun day.

It was kind of late when we went to the Garden of the Gods, but it was still really beautiful.  We walked around a lot of it and saw some wildlife.

We are so lucky to have the best families!

Pumpkins

This year we carved four pumpkins.  I bought carving kits for a Young Women's activity, so we carved some cool ones.  Jayce chose all the patterns except my Jack Nicholson pumpkin, which I chose.  I was trying to find a pattern for a Steve Martin pumpkin, but had to settle for Jack.

Here are Jayce's pumpkins that she and her dad carved.

Here are the girls all ready to go to a trunk-or-treat party.  Jayce likes to dress scary for Halloween- nothing cutesy.  She wanted to be Chucky or Michael Myers.  They were both kind of disturbing, so we settled on Chucky.