Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we started getting ready. The first thing we did was try out some of our new games to see what we wanted to play on Thanksgiving. The kids have probably played "Cover Your Assets" a hundred times since this first picture was taken. Sometimes it has ended in tears, like in the picture, but mostly it has been a lot of fun. It was also fun getting ready in other ways for the day. The kids and Nate were a HUGE help! Everyone helped Nate do the turkeys and Lia and Laura were great decorators! The night before when I went up to say goodnight to everyone, I found Lia, Laura, and Megan all tucked in Laura's bed. They were so cute I didn't want to move them! I let them stay until Megan fell asleep and then I moved them because I figured everyone needed a decent night's sleep for the next day. Other than the fact that Katie's kids got sick so they couldn't come, everything turned out great! It was so nice to see (almost) everyone and be together. Even with all the changes in our family, we still have a lot to be thankful for.

Mid November

Listening to Lia and Laura practice primary songs together makes me so happy! They were supposed to play in Sacrament meeting until Lia slipped on our kitchen floor right before bed and broke both bones in her right arm. I felt so bad (partly because I was the reason she came back downstairs and ran into the kitchen where she slipped in her socks), but she was so brave and has been a good sport about it since. They had to set it, so she spent almost two weeks in a splint and has another couple of weeks in her new cast. In other news, I took the kids to get smoothies to thank them for babysitting each other and Katie's kids the night Matthew went through the temple, Lia had fun with Annie at Grandma and Grandpa Nelsons, and Megan had a movie night with our neighbors. We sure lucked out with our neighbors!

November

Laura entered the reflections contest at school this year with a piano piece she composed. When we found out she was moving on to the next level (district), we were told she needed the score to her song. Thanks to a friend in our ward who has a computer program that makes that nice and easy, Laura got to see a written version of her song. She was pretty excited about it and excited to be moving on! Also at the beginning of November, we took the kids to a BYU women's soccer game. It was a fun, super cheap activity for a Saturday night!

Halloween

For Halloween this year we had Junie B. Jones, a skin suit guy, a peacock, and a strawberry. The kids all trick-or-treated with their friends this year, so for the first time since we've had kids, Nate and I stayed home together and passed out candy and hot chocolate and scones. (Josh's friends Bryson and Camden were also in skin suits and Lia's friend Kylee was a pineapple. Unfortunately I lost my pictures of them with their friends.)