Thanksgiving Feast #1

Gotta love Thanksgiving!
This year my mom's side of the family had Thanksgiving the Saturday before, and it...was...awesome. So many people could be there, and we did it at the church, so there was room for everyone. It was great!
The highlights for the kids:
Ornament Painting
Pinata
Basketball/Football
Running Around the Church

My Aunt Syd. The orchestrator. We love her!

Aunt Sydney

Sisters

Wannabe Sisters (yeah, Chels, you know you do)

I invaded couples' pictures. I'm cool.
Kelly w/ Chelsea & Alex

More invading: Kelly w/ Leslie & Doug

Cousins.
Minus Ben (he can only be in one picture with me per function).

Tessa, Ryan & Ethan painting ornaments.

Ryan trying to gather as much as he can!

Ethan also trying to get as much candy as his little arms can handle. This is when they said, "Mom, I need a bag!"

Ryan

Cousin Tessa

Ethan

Utah vs. TCU

We love the U, even though they played an embarrassing game against TCU.
Gotta love the game anyway, here were the highlights:
*Eating at Tony Burger before the game
*Then running from the Engineering building to the stadium (it's far, trust me) because you're late...but you just ate a huge hamburger, fries, and diet coke.
*Blackout
*A Streaker (yup, we saw some boobs) all the guys were excited.

Thanks to my Mom and Marshall for co-watching the kids for us!

And thanks to our friends (you know who you are) for entering our messy bedroom to get our tickets for us, because we forgot them (thankfully they were going to the game too)!

The "Cow" & The Mouse

Ryan brought home "Tom the Turkey" for his homework. He had to make a disguise for Tom, so no one could find him on Thanksgiving. Ryan chose to disguise Tom as a Cow. Is that the cutest thing or what?

We have mice in our house.
It's gross.

I "trapped" one in our cleaning closet--well, either it escaped, or it got out and is now under our stove. I "trapped" it again. Hoping it will step on the mouse sticky pads.
Ethan said he liked mice, and drew it a picture. Ethan is hoping the mouse will come out to see it, and say thanks.

Before & After (well, it's more during than after)

Remember what our front steps/yard looked like before?

Our new steps (that you've already seen) Just giving you another before picture.

After!!
(Okay, it really is during, because it is not finished)
Ben is amazing is all I can say. He has done a fabulous job with the wall. And he has the back pain to prove it! Our sidewalk slopes a lot as you can see, and Ben has kept the wall completely level. Really, it's amazing. You should come by and tell him he's done a wonderful job, he likes that. :-)

Both of the boys love to go out and help dad. Ryan is really good at grabbing tools and holding the measuring tape, and digging. Ethan is good at getting dirty.

Do you see that sweet curve?

Thanks for being so handy Ben!


Another Kelly Story:

I've been getting after Ben lately (which he loves a little nag every now and then) about being nice to the neighbors. He likes our neighbors, it's not that...it's just, when he is out working in the yard he is busy, and just doesn't think about saying hi to anyone. So if someone stops to talk with him, he may sound a little short (maybe rude) when I promise he's not a rude dude (he does not even realize he's being short...I promise!), he's just busy!

Anyway, he decides to take my advice while he was working in the yard. He actually waved to a random neighbor (he did not know this neighbor) just to be friendly. Well, this neighbor stopped his car, turned around, pulled into our driveway and said to Ben, "Wow, you look like you have your work cut out for you, hey by the way I have some gravel in my front yard that needs to be moved to the backyard." And then he ASKED BEN if he could move it for him with Ben's tractor thing (it's my cousin's small bobcat that Ben has been using).
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?
He really just saw that Ben was super busy, then asked Ben to do stuff for HIS yard! HA!

Ben and I are all for helping our neighbors/friends out when they need help. But we are not all for being taken advantage of because we are friendly/nice.

Now I'm mad at this guy, because I know Ben will go back to being his "unfriendly" self. So he does not have to deal with what happened again.

SIDENOTE: Ben really is a nice guy. Come say hi! When he's outside working, that's what he's focused on...is working...he's not thinking about much else. (I'm sure a lot of guys are the same way).

p.s. Ben told this guy to shove off. Just Kidding, he said in a friendly way that NO he could not do it. But he could give him my cousins' phone number and the random neighbor could PAY my cousin to do it. The neighbor was not all for that idea. ;-)