Thanksgiving Overview

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving full of Family, Friends and Food. The "3 F's" as we call it in our family...what is better than that?

But with every wonderful thing, we also had...the cold. All of us are sick: Livi, Luke, Spencer, my mom and Spencer...yuck! Most of our nights were spent up with Livi because of her coughing...this made for some LONG NIGHTS! Anyway...

Tuesday: Mom and Dad drove to our home. Andru, Marilee and Kids came too and stayed with Marilee's sister, Natalie.

Wednesday: we drove out to Painesville (east of Kirtland) to Natalie and Gregg's home. We had a great time preparing the pies and the main course for the Thanksgiving feast! Thankfully the pies got done and we had dessert. Apparantly there is a tradition that my parent's started a few years ago to eat PIE and dessert the night before since there wouldn't be any room AFTER the feast. All the pies were DELICIOUS! We had 2 pecan pies, a cranberry/apple pie, pumpkin, keylime and a frozen mint icecream pie. My favorites were pecan and the cranberry/apple. YUM!

Thursday: We drove back out for dinner and it was wonderful. I must say...my mom is an AMAZINGLY good cook! (Yes, other's helped too! Natalie, LUke, Marilee, Me, etc) I also don't think that she minded cooking in Natalie's GORGEOUS kitchen either! It was a beautiful evening and meal. We ended up playing games as a family: signs, potholder, apples to apples. Then we brought out the rest of the pies (thank goodness we had some leftover!!) and played Ticket to Ride and Settlers. Of course I forgot my camera BOTH nights!!

Friday: Today we spent the afternoon/evening in Kirtland. The Metropark out in that area have a Candy Land exhibit where the kids can go and play a life-like version of it. It was BEAUTIFUL and the kids had a great time. We did some gingerbread crafts, walked through the Nature Park and then went to Panera for dinner. Candy Land:

Giant Lollipops

A bit later we traveled BACK to Kirtland to see the tree Lighting and Nativities.. Wow! They had 3 rooms dedicated to the different nativities. The school house was full of Nativities from around the world (Uganda, Germany, Phillipines, etc), upstairs in the Visitor's Center they had a room for the kids' nativities and they were allowed to play with them...and the other room was dedicated to the Nativities that other's had brought. There were hundreds of them! Unfortunately with a tired toddler, we left early before I could take a picture, but it was truly amazing and it was a sight to remember. We love Kirtland!

Nativities from around the world:

UgandaRwanda
Saturday: We slept in and slept all day! We spent time together and went out to eat and to the mall. Finished the night with Harry Potter 5.

Sunday: mom and dad left to go home. Hope that they miss the HUGE snowstorm blowing in! Thanks for coming and hanging out with us...we had a FANTASTIC Thanksgiving and hopefully we can see you at Christmas!

Death and Thanksgiving

I know this is a WEIRD title, but it seemed quite appropriate since this last weekend. It seems that the holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, or at least the cold month holidays) are full of death and sadness. Morbid thought, yes. Truthful, yes.

Luke's paternal grandmother died this past weekend after a year+ battle with brain cancer. It was sad that she had to suffer, but wonderful that she died pretty peacefully, without pain.

A few months back Grandpa put her in a nursing home because she needed more help than he could provide at home. Luke and I didn't quite understand how bad it was until we emailed Iris (Luke's mom) last week and she explain what state Grandma was in. It was pretty bad. Up until putting her in the nursing home, she had been in quite a bit of pain, but the nursing home was able to provide her with the medication she needed.

This past Saturday we received a call that Grandma had gone into a coma. They didn't expect her to live long, not even through the night, so everyone was able to prepare themselves. We got a call around 1a.m. that she had passed. The most amazing part? She came out of her coma for a few minutes, looked at Grandpa and then passed on. How beautiful is that?

What's not so beautiful? They weren't members of the Church, so they believed that instead of seeing each other again, that they were resting forever. I guess that is better than thinking other things, but sad nonetheless. I guess it's even sadder that they WERE members of the Church a LONG time ago, but left.

On a brighter note, I am so thankful that as members of the Church, we KNOW there is life after death and that we can live with our family members again someday. So thankful that some of my family will be spending Thanksgiving with us and eating LOTS of fantastic food!!

What are you thankful for on this TUESDAY before Thanksgiving?

Love bite?

Spencer has a habit of biting. It is getting better, but he still bites or at least he pretends to bite. Lately he has decided to run around chomping his teeth when he is mad or angry at Livi (or me or luke).

I have told Livi to do one of the following:
1.) Push him enough to get away and RUN!
2.) Yell and run and get me.

Apparantly she didn't get the memo because I caught HER biting Spencer on the cheek today and she left quite the mark. **I'll take pictures after his nap**

Needless to say, do you have any parenting tips on how to STOP the biting? I know some moms bite back, but honestly, what kind of message would I be sending my child if I BITE him/her?

PLUS, when the Social Service worker comes to take my kids and sees MY TEETH marks on them, how am I supposed to explain it? ;)

Gas Prices

Holy cow! I can't believe how much the gas prices have gone down over the last few weeks. I thought it was noteworthy to tell the world how much I paid to fill up my SUV this past week. There was a 1/4 of a tank and I filled it up for $13.48! Wowzer!



Alright, here is the reason why:

$1.79 gal, BUT since we shop at Giant Eagle and they participate in fuelperks, we get $$ off PER GALLON when we shop there. SO, we got a $1 off EACH gallon.....$.79/gal! Seriously, it has been a great week!

Update: I guess I should clarify. We do get $ 0.10 off per $10 we spend (0r something like that) BUT we let it build up and that's how we got $1 off per gallon.