An unusual Thanksgiving

Wow! Three posts in a little over 24 hours! I swear I'm done for a while now. :)

Here's what Thanksgiving was like at our house:


It was actually kind of nice to have a relaxing day (since Jessica and Michael were sick with food poisoning/stomach flu/something). Jessica and Michael both slept in until past 9am, both took long naps, and we just kind of all hung out together. We're just grateful it happened now and not in a couple of weeks during finals.

We had a big dinner thing planned with some other couples, but obviously that didn't work out for us. They were so nice to bring us some food. Thanks guys!

Oreo Turkeys

This past Monday some friends invited us over to make these cute Oreo Turkeys! And since Thanksgiving has a little more downtime this year compared to most (see previous post), I got some digital scrapbooking done from the fun event!

Thanksgiving

Why am I posting about Thanksgiving at 5:30 in the morning? Well, I just got back from the store to purchase Thanksgiving dinner. Here's what's on the menu today for Michael and Jessica:

Baby Names

Michael and I have been trying to come up names for our baby boy. We have a few we're throwing around, but nothing feels exactly right yet. Jessica has been trying her best to help. Here are her ideas:

Daddy
Jesus
Mommy
Eyebrow
Jessica
Care Bears
Snowflake

Somehow none of them really felt quite right either. Any suggestions from those of you out there? "Michael" will almost for sure be the middle name.

We don't want to talk about it

Family Pictures

We got our family pictures for the year taken over the weekend. They turned out AMAZING! We took them at the UofI arboretum. The fall colors were just gorgeous! And unlike last time we had pictures done, Jessica was actually being very cooperative. :) Enjoy!

Crafty, Crafty Me!

This past weekend our ward did Super Saturday (a Saturday devoted to making a variety of crafts, etc.). So fun! I made some "Autumn" blocks (ignore the colored-on mini pumpkin in the picture) and a mat for our "The Living Christ." I was in craft-mode after that. I used some similar wooden blocks to the ones I'd used before and made a winter decoration as well. I was pretty impressed with my own craftiness. :) A friend of ours had a super cute apron for her little girl. I've been wanting to copy it for a while, but we don't have our sewing machine here. I finally borrowed one and got that project done as well. It's been a fun weekend for me.

What a Week!!

We have had quite the past week. On Wednesday we made a last minute trip to the San Francisco area for a funeral. It was the first really sad funeral I've ever been to, but it was great to see family. Jessica loved playing with her cousins.

Jessica, Emma, and Tyler

On the way down, we stopped off in NV to stay the night with some relatives. It was SO fun! Thanks Jim, Shar, Emily, and Nick for not only giving us a place to sleep, but also a lot of excitement. We spent the night carving pumpkins and eating pumpkin pie.

Since we were in the area, we decided to spend the morning after the funeral in San Francisco. We didn't have much time, but we loved wandering around Fisherman's Warf/Pier 39. Jessica loved all the seals. It's hilarious to hear her imitate them. We had a lunch of clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl - YUM!


Halloween was so much better than I ever could have expected. Jessica was born to trick-or-treat. She was a kitty this year.

Every time she was given candy she would gasp and giggle her little head off. It never got old for her, even as her bucket got so heavy that we thought she'd start complaining (she didn't). I think she made the day for a lot of people.


On the ride back home we were telling her about Christmas coming up. She told us that she wanted to be a spider for Christmas. I think dressing up for every holiday sounds like a great idea. :)

18 hours in the car later and we were back home. Whew! It was quite the weekend, but we're so glad we were able to go!