Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we almost spent an entire week up north. It was great though. We were all still sick and mine hit me the worse on actual Thanksgiving so I had to make up for the loss of food intake and calories the rest of the weekend. And I did. But lets start at the beginning. The kids are at a fun stage that driving isn't so bad and staying somewhere else isn't so hard even with naps. We drove up Wednesday and stayed at Granny Annies. My kids had fun with my parents but really just wanted to be at Mason's house (Kristas) all weekend. We went to Thanksgiving with my moms family in Vernon at their newly remodeled church. Okay so I guess its been done for like 3 years, but thats how long its been since I've been out to the farm. Lame. Thursday was chill and nice, couldn't have asked for anything better. Friday included seeing Tangled (WHICH I LOVED!!) Cutest Disney movie in a long time in my opionion. I also went shopping with my mom and my sister and went out to lunch with a long lost friend. Cordelle spent the evening with his high school buddies watching the Jazz game. It was good for him to get out of distance of my family for awhile. :) And Saturday of course was the Morris Thanksgiving Breakfast. Everything was so super yummy as usual. Seriously I have to get this recipe for this oven cooked french toast thing soaking in this caramelized brown sugar mixture. It is really to die for! Then they always do a service project, which I really think is cool. Every year we do something different. This year, we decorated boxes for meals on wheels and made file folder games for the nursery in Cordelle's parents ward in Chicago. Cool! Then of course we all met at his brother Camerons place to watch the BYU vs. UTAH game and EAT. We are die hard BYU fans so it was a devestating loss, but that comes with the territory of getting all worked up....Every year, my stomach turns to knots and it just makes me have to go to the bathroom. Is it worth it? Sigh...when they win. Sunday my sister blessed her cute little baby Zach and then had yummy fruit and roll sandwiches. I have a major carb (specifically homemade roll) problem. Then we hung out at my other sister Tallie's house and made a wise decision to just stay the night and not fight the thanksgiving traffic by going home, mostly because it was snowing. And boy did it snow! So that added an extra day to our vacation. It was nice. I love Thanksgiving. I downloaded a Josh Groban song called Thankful (I think). And it really just summed up how I was feeling. And now....pumpin up for Christmas!! And all our Christmas shopping is DONE! So now we really can enjoy things!

Okay these pictures are out of order and I "borrowed" them from my sister in law Lisa's blog and my cousin Talena's facebook page

playing games with the kids after the Morris breakfast

helping Seth color his Meals on Wheels box

Talking with Cordelle's parents over skype

Aunt Tallie and Jaq

Wendy and Krista's baby Zach

Daddy-o

My cute little Grandpa Durrant

playing Thanksgiving BiNgO at the Durrant Thanksgiving

New Family Pics

Okay I love them all so I have to post them all. Sorry! Abbey Kyhl is awesome! Every year she does such a good job! Thanks. (http://www.akstudio.typepad.com/)

October this and that

Okay one afternoon Jaq and Seth were playing in the pantry right after lunch. Then all of the sudden, it was not so much Seth anymore and I wasnt hearing any noises from Jaquelle and her blanket which, as you can see in the picture, were still clearly in the pantry. (okay so really, its not out of the ordinary to not hear noises from her blanket, unless she was under or otherwise wrapped up in the blanket, but from the girl alone, yes it was out of the ordinary).

Pretty sure she had fallen ASLEEP in there. Of course when I opened the door she kind of woke up when I wanted to snap a picture. Fuhh-ny.

Our robot family.

I just liked this picture of Jaquelle cause she looks so sweet and innocent, even though she is minutes away from destroying the contents of my purse and making the pause between the time the checker at the grocery store finishes checking out my items and the time it takes me to find where on earth she put my debit card, A WHOLE LOT LONGER. (if of course, I find it at all)

October we had pumpkins coming out of our ears! Really. All month we were like, "what? we cant hear you, we have pumpkins in our ears." For real though, and its not like we grew in any in a garden or anything. I bought a couple at the beginning of the month for decor reasons. Then Seth got invited to go with some friends to a pumpkin patch so we picked up a few more. Then he came home from preschool with one. Next thing I know Cordelle comes home with 3 more cause some farmers market was having a good sale on them. Anyways we only carved 2 and the rest are still on our porch rotting. (just in case you were wondering what we did with them all. :)

SETH WINS!!

Tonight I watched Seth just beam as he got to stay up and play games with the adults (Neal, Britt, Cordelle and I). He seriously was trying to be so grown up, I couldn't help just watching him. Seth loves games and tonight one of the ones we were playing was Yatzee. He can roll dice and try to keep the same numbered dice together so we let him play on his own score sheet. Little did we know he would slaughter us! The kid got 3 yatzees! It was amazing! But he ate it all up for what it was worth. It was pretty cute but amazing! I think his final score was like 420 something! We all couldn't believe it. Looks like he's gonna have his dad's genuine luck at games of chance.

Seth's victory score. I had other more enthusiastic pictures but of course they didnt turn out cause he was jumping all over.

Us looking disappointed after losing in Yatzee to a 4 year old.

I forgot about this dreadful stage....

So we've had this bunk bed in the garage since the beginning of the summer for Jaquelle and now its finally getting colder so Cordelle wants to park in the garage again. (A garage for parking? Thats unheard of!) Anyways so he doesnt want to scrape off the frost in the mornings...yadda, yadda...so we moved Jaq out of her crib into the big girl bed! And the first 2 nights! SUCCESS! She didn't even realize that she didn't have to call for me to get her out anymore. It was bliss. Then one day she saw Seth jump onto her bed and then get down himself. And she followed suit. The next thing we know its like 30 minutes at bedtime putting her back in her bed over 45 TIMES (no exaggeration). And naps are simply NOT happening. Its a nightmare and I suddenly remember going through this with Seth, only he would at least lay in bed if you laid there with him. Not with the Diva, Miss Jaq. There is no rationalizing with her. And I'm not trying to be complicated with a 2 year old, just a little negotiation, like "dont get out of bed or I'll take your babies." But then comes screaming and gnashing of teeth and we're worse off then we started. Anyways, so bedtime's a nightmare and I find myself yearning for that crib and our peace of mind aka "sleep". I think I might secretly set it up tomorrow. We'll see. Super nanny says be consistent, dont say a word and just keep taking her back. Right now though, this is the best game Jaq's ever experienced. Suggestions anyone?

Holla Halloween

Halloween!! I love Halloween! Its such a fun holiday for kids. Even my shy kids eventually squeeked out a "trick or treat" once they realized the reward involved. But they were great! And even though we scared Seth to death that if he ate too much candy he would get diarhhea ( I dont know why but this threat works for him cause he does get diarhhea a lot and candy makes it worse right?) Anyways, even though we threatened him, he still insisted on carrying around 2 handfuls of candy everywhere he went for 2 days. We did learn however that eating handfuls of candy and then spinning on our office chair leaves you feeling like puke-face for about 45 minutes. Poor kid. Pretty sure he's got Cordelle's motion weirdness. :)

So anyways here's some pics from the Halloween night.

Seth organizing his candy into sections (is this weird? do your kids do this?) Talk about future organizationalist. (pretty sure my spell check is flashing that one back at me)

again. Funny things they do. Jaq lining her candy in a large candy train.

Cordelle and I dressed up the night before and went to our annual Halloween party at our friends the Haags. I dressed up in a robe and curlers and Cordelle printed out a huge fake check written to me and brought balloons and we were the Publisher Clearing House couple. It was fun! But we are lame and forgot to take pictures. Hopefully I can track down the one my friend Lisa took at the party and post it. Happy Hallows Eve!

Time Out for Women

This last weekend I was invited to go to Time Out for Women in Las Vegas with my good friend Valerie, her sister, Val's old friend (and my new neighbor) Tiffany, and her sister Lindsay. I know next year, I am totally bringing one of MY sisters! Anyways we went down and stayed in the Red Rock Resort Hotel and it was quite the fun hotel. We went out to dinner and yahoo-mapped our way around Las Vegas till we found the convention center where TOFW was. The music and speakers made me cry, and laugh my brains out all within minutes of each other. John Bytheway, Brad Wilcox, some guy that sounded like a mormon Josh Groban (sorry can't remember his name), Kris Belcher.....ah, it was so much fun! It was really good for me. And who could complain about a girls weekend? I should have taken more pictures but of course, I brought a camera completely out of batteries. So thanks Tiffany for these.

Hong Kong Visitors

Last weekend my brother and his girlfriend Tiffany from Hong Kong came and visited with her parents. Her parents were here for the first time in the US so my brother was showing them all the sights of Utah, Vegas, and California. They were so much fun. We couldn't understand each other without Tiffany there to translate for us, but we really loved being with them. Tiff's parents loved Seth and Jaq, and the kids didn't seem to know that they couldn't understand them, but spent hours playing blocks and other games with our visitors. I think the first time Seth realized they didn't understand him was right before they left when a moth flew in our house and Seth wanted to catch it and show Cordelle. Well Tiff's mom just caught it and threw it in the garbage. Seth kept telling her that he wanted to show his dad, but obviously she couldn't understand him so she just threw it away anyways. He was way upset about it, so I tried to explain the concept of different languages to a 4 year old and I cant say it got through. Pretty much he was a little upset at her for a second, but like most things, got over it! Anyways here's some pictures we took with them when we took them to Cedar Breaks. Its been awhile since we've been up there so it was fun to see everything. Mostly they were just amazed by the snow! How funny. I guess Hong Kong is on the coast so they had to go all the way around the world just to see the snow. :)