Thanksgiving Weekend

We had an enjoyable and busy Thanksgiving weekend. We ate Thanksgiving dinner with my mom's side of the family in Salt Lake City Thursday afternoon. We ate some dessert with them too. Then we drove down to Murray to have some more pie with my dad's side of the family. We felt quite full after that.

Friday we hung out in Orem with my immediate family, and then that evening we drove back up to Salt Lake to celebrate my grandpa's birthday. We had another very large meal involving lots of delicious food and some leftover dressing from the day before. (My mom and a couple other people made several recipes worth of dressing for Thanksgiving. However, my grandma, not knowing so many people had been assigned to make dressing, was afraid there wouldn't be enough and made a few more batches to bring as well. Consequently, we were swimming in dressing.)

Saturday morning was particularly fun. We met up with Nate's old roommates and their significant others for a morning of racquetball at the Orem Rec Center.

Andy, Brian, and Jill (Andy's wife) playing a game of cutthroat.

Here I am playing a game against Hailey.

I have improved at racquetball so much since I first started playing. Now racquetball is one of my favorite sports. Nate and I are pretty fortunate to have access to racquetball courts so we can play and practice regularly.

After racquetball we headed to the nearest Subway for some lunch. Man were we hungry!

Saturday afternoon we visited the Springville Museum of Art to see the religious show. As usual, there were some really nice pieces and some really strange ones.

After visiting the museum we went to visit Nate's extended family. They always have a Thanksgiving dinner a day or two after Thanksgiving because everyone is with other family on Thanksgiving day. Only this year, we also were celebrating Nate's grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary. So, we congratulated them and ate another very large dinner.

Congratulations Ben!

My youngest brother just got his mission call today. He is going to serve in the Antananarivo Madagascar mission speaking Malagasy. He will be entering the MTC on March 24th. We so are excited for him!!! Congratulations Ben!

Halloween Festivities

Friday evening we drove down to my parent's house for a family Halloween party. It was lots of fun. We ate our traditional pigs-in-a-blanket Halloween dinner, carved jack-o-lanterns, ate doughnuts, drank cider, chocolate milk, and root beer, and watched Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. Nate and I carved a skull out of our jack-o-lantern this year, since our pumpkin was shaped just like a skull. My favorite jack-o-lantern though was the one My mom carved as figure in The Scream, shown in the middle of the group above. If you look closely, you can even see the hands she carved into the side of its face.

















We also dressed up for the occasion. I dressed as a cowgirl and Nate was my cow. Everyone else in the family dressed up too, except for my grandparents, who took the group picture for us.

Saturday was also a lot of fun for me. I went horseback riding in the afternoon with my old teacher, Geneva. We all dressed up, and she took some of her family, students, and friends trick-or-treating around the west part of Provo. We trotted up Center Street to the housing areas and stopped by pre-arranged trick-or-treat stops (at some other friends' houses). Then we rode through the Provo river to the other side where we hit up a few other houses in another subdivision before returning to the stables. It was a lot of fun!