I hate being late! And Thanksgiving was soo long ago. Everyone is totally over it and on to Christmas – but oh well. Here is my holiday post anyways… We made the long drive to Utah (thank goodness for DVD players and cheap gas!) where we stayed at my parents’ house for over a week. My sister Joanne and her family stayed at the house also – which made for lots of fun male bonding time between all of our 5 little boys. They were even treated to rides on Grandpa’s new John Deere. Family members: there are lots more pictures and captions here.
I also have three married brothers who live in Utah and were camped out at the house for much of the week. We cursed BYU football, watched lots of movies, hit a few Utah restaurants (Brick Oven being one, where I had two whole glasses of ice water spilled down my back and our pizza was an hour late 😕 ), jumped on the trampoline, played a ton of Guitar Hero and Mario Kart (Jake is obsessed), pigged out, soaked in the hot tub (well, I soaked my feet), and generally had a nice relaxing time. I was happy to read a few books, kick my feet up without the ever-present housework and errands looming, and work on a family history project I’ve been trying to finish up.
Turkey day started off with the boys playing some football and the kids/moms/dogs watching. Later our delicious feast was POLISHED OFF (seriously, there were like no leftovers…. what in the world?) by a whopping 24 people. Thanks Mom and all the others who contributed to the massive calorie intake. My favorite being the sweet potato casserole – soooo good. I happily cooked nothing. I’m really not that big a fan of cooking. It’s not that I can’t – I just don’t really enjoy it. I’d much rather sit down and have food magically appear before me. It’s really so much better that way! Which is why I hope I don’t have to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for at least another 20 years.
My big job was to set the table. Seems lame I know, but it really wasn’t as easy as it sounds with 24 people. More time consuming than you’d think… I even added name cards at the last minute in order to avoid the inevitable confusion/chaos that our family gatherings always seem to create. I was proud of my work.
The next day I decorated my mom’s Christmas tree for her. It’s a free service I provide every year that I’m there for Thanksgiving. I like doing it and she likes letting me do it. Plus, then I don’t feel so guilty about avoiding the kitchen the day before. 🙂 The kids were happy to help bring in the holiday spirit and were overly anxious to do our tree when we got home. It took me about a week to get all of our decorations up – but our house is nice and festive now too…
Oh and about the drive home – don’t ask. Let’s just say we won’t ever be driving south of Vegas on a Sunday night/holiday weekend again. What were we thinking?? Instead of getting home Sunday around 7:30 pm like we’d planned – we got home Monday morning around 9. Jake was late to school. Brent was late to work. Yeah… LESSON LEARNED. On a happier note – a few more pictures that I just HAD to include.
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