Happy Thanksgiving, all & Birthday, Cal!

Not only did we have a fabulous Thanksgiving, we got to celebrate Cal's birthday too!  Eleven years ago, Callahan came in as a Black Friday baby and every six or seven years he gets to celebrate on Thanksgiving, which was this year. We sure love this little turkey and are so thankful for him!

To get ready for Thanksgiving and think about how much we have been blessed with, we made a sign on the wall that said "blessings brighten when we count them".  Then I printed out a bunch of light bulbs and every day during November we encouraged everyone to write something down they were thankful for and we put them on the wall.  It seemed like everyone really thought out of the box this year and it was great to have everyone get into it.  It is true when we think about our blessing, things seem brighter!  We had some interesting ones this year including the new youth program, dishwashers, the Little Mermaid musical, fire fighters, policeman, humor, grandmas, grandpas, snowcones, legos, armed forces, slime, power, pumpkin pie, snow, medicine, sleep, fall, sacrament, leaves, ramen noodles, candy, crafts, words, fun, teachers, toys, a voice, U.S.A., a job, paper, the Light of the World - Jesus Christ, and more.

Cov had a "Disguise a turkey" homework assignment, and we decided to all do them together as a family.  Cov made a rainbow turkey, Dave did a Superman, I did a Napoleon Dynamite, Emma did a Thanos, Cal did an Iron Man, Lucy did a ninja, and Sydnie did a bunch of great colors.  We had a fun time coming up with ideas and sharing them!

A couple of days before Thanksgiving, we headed down.  It was snowy almost everywhere, but we were blessed to have nice roads.  We got there late at night and the kids were a bit wired.  We talked to Grandma & Grandpa Ryerse.  The next morning, we woke up and hung out for a bit.  Then we went to the Stoddard grandparents to make Cal's birthday cake and play.  We made a turkey cake and Em did lots of it and it was awesome looking, but the feathers we made out of candy melts were too heavy so the turkey's back end fell off!  Ahh!  Luckily, I'm used to cake disasters.  ;)  We played around and had fun with them.  Then we went back to the Ryerses to see everyone after they got off work.

Thursday, we woke up and watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.  It was one of the windiest on record.  Cal was woken up by Grandma with birthday spanks. We went back to the Stoddard's, along with Mark, Mayela & Amber and had a fun brunch.  We had all kinds of drinks, sweet breads, sausage and omelets.  My mom thought this might be fun instead and it was a nice change of pace.  We sat around talking and the kids played.  I love these times together!  Then we went back to the Ryerses (see a theme here...back and forth!!) and made some orange and crescent rolls and helped with the other food/set up.  The kids played outside in the snow.  It snowed a ton!  The most snow I remember on Thanksgiving ever!  We had a nice and tasty dinner and it was fun catching up.  Everyone but Jerry & Stacy's family was there.  Then we played some games for Cal's birthday, including a Nerf turkey balloon shoot, shake your tail feathers, and more.  Cal opened his presents next and was very excited about everything he got.  He was not excited about all of the pictures we took of him that day, haha. We sang to him, which was pretty tame with my parents being there and then ate cake, rice krispy treats, pie and ice-cream, phew!  He had a great birthday!

The day after Thanksgiving, it was more chilling. We went to the Rush Funplex with our own little family.  We stayed busy doing the laser tag, glow Carts, rock wall, roller skating, foam pit, bumper cars, and mini golf.  We didn't even get to everything but it was a hoot!  That night, we went to go see the lights at Temple Square with Erin & Randy, Jeff & Shirley and Colleen.  It was very snowy and cold, but we had a good time.  We took some pizza back home with us and had a pizza party.  Then the four olders went up to Morgan to have a sleep over at Uncle Randy and Aunt Erin's new house.  They watched movies and played games, ate treats and made a fun breakfast and enjoyed being with them so much! Dave and I (and our tag along Sydnie) went shopping and to go get Fizz drinks together.  Yum!

Saturday, we were supposed to go to Amy's house for dinner with all the Stoddard gang and hang out all day, but the roads were closed all day instead.  Bummer!  So we hung out at the Ryerses for a bit and just lazied around, helped decorate for Christmas, and watched football for rivalry Saturday.  Then we went to my parents to play games and eat pie.  Then Emma, my mom and I went shopping.  We found some good deals, we critiqued things and laughed and just had a good time together.  We were all tired that night and crashed pretty quick.  The next day, we went to sacrament meeting and headed home.  Had a pretty good trip minus a detour through Livingston which took us an extra hour and 40 minutes because of high winds and low visibility due to blowing snow.

We are thankful for so much!  It was a great Thanksgiving and the more we think about what we have, the more we do have and life in general seems brighter.