Table for 9?

We had a delightful Thanksgiving! It was a small gathering, which was odd for us, but still nice. We all fit around one table - is it a real Thanksgiving celebration if you can fit around one table? No small kids around which made it peaceful but not nearly as interesting. Kristy & Trevor headed to Utah to spend it with the Lacey's and Jon & Kacey & kids headed to Gridley. So we had Brad, Courtney and Kylie here who drove up together from BYU. They left Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. and arrived Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. after having to turn around at the Idaho border and spend the night in Brigham City waiting for the road to open up again. Long drive but I'm grateful they did it because I loved having them home!

I usually forget to pull out the camera at times like these but luckily I remembered. I set up to take a nice shot of everyone around the table and I was greeted with these hands. Whose idea was that and how did they orchestrate it so quickly!



Then I made them put their hands down and took some shots of our group.


Bryan (15), David (49) & Brad (23)


Kylie (almost 19), Kendall (17) & Courtney (21)


Grandma Earl (84 years young - isn't she amazing!)


This is Dan Heldt (19ish?) who is a friend from 7th ward. We had to invite at least one non-Earl to keep us all in line. (Question: How do you keep a Mormon from drinking all your beer? Answer: Bring more than one! Ha ha. )


David, Peggy (also 49) & Brad








And that's when Kylie took over my camera...











Kylie decided she could help best with cleaning up by photographing our efforts!






Apparently she found the sweet potatoes picture worthy! (Not that anyone would eat them! Haven't people discovered yet that sweet potatoes are nature's candy? Who doesn't love a vegetable with marshmallows on top!)


Kendall's idea of cleaning up:




Then the kids opened up their Christmas ornaments from Grandma:


























This is my Aunt Dee Dee who is up visiting my dad and helping to take care of him after his knee surgery. She's a gem and I just love her. I'm proud to be named after her (Peggy Dee.)




We played games and put a couple of puzzles together. This one was our most challenging. Luckily, Courtney is kind of a puzzle whiz. She see has a gift!






My BYU kids with grandma.


One of the highlights of our Thanksgiving Day was playing WII's Let's Dance 2 with the fam. Even grandma got in on the fun! We have some great video but it wouldn't upload to blogger so checkout my Facebook if you want to put a smile on your face!

I would love to say that our next adventure is our Christmas cruise that we planned 6 months ago but, alas, it has been canceled. Major bummer! We were scheduled to take a cruise on that same Carnival ship that caught fire a few weeks ago and they canceled all sailings on that ship through through the middle of January. We are so bummed because we were really looking forward to that family adventure. They are giving us a refund plus 25% off of a future cruise (not nearly enough compensation for canceling our Christmas if you ask me... but no one did.) Instead, we are going to be staying in California because we were all headed there anyway. We are going to be staying a few days in Newport Beach and a few days in Palm Springs. We still get to be together so it will be fun. We will just be so sad to do our own cooking and cleaning - ha ha!

So grateful for our many, many blessings!