Monday Night Thanksgiving

Yesterday we celebrated Thanksgiving with our kids becauswe we are all going different ways on Thursday.  I wish that I would have taken more pictures.  One of the whole family. 

This is such a cute one of Rafe! 

He's our little turkey!

 

 

Both Kaitlyn and Alyssia got to be with us and that was nice.

 

 

Rafe likes to be held in this position.  It looks pretty uncomfortable to me:)

This year we wer blessed with warm weather so after our wonderful turkey dinner with ALL of the fixins'.  We ventured outside to play a game called The Pumpkin Roll.  It was a relay and the objective is to push  a pumkin with a broom to the end of the yard and back and then to pass of the broom to your partner who races to the finish line.  Rick was awesome!  He helped our team to win!

 

                                                 Rick and Sarah on the home stretch.

 

 

After playing this game we came in to play The Corn Pitch where we tossed candy corns into a bowl.  Skylar was the winner on that one.  Then we played a Thanksgiving Trivia game with miniature candy bars for prizes.  After that we played a memory game called Thanksgiving Dinner.  This one is where one person says...For my Thanksgiving Dinner I had....and then they say a food like turkey.  Then the next person says For my Thanksgiving Dinner I had Stuffing and then adds turkey to his.  It goes around the circle adding more foods until people forget what was named.  Anyway, that probably doesn't make sense but we had a fun time playing it.  We had close to 20 different foods to remember.  Crazy!  After the festivities we took some time to talk about our blessings.  I am truly blessed and I am thankful to ponder on what Heavenly Father has given me.  So, so much!  Now we are headed to St. George and then on to Vegas to spend Thanksgiving Day with the Hafen family. 

 I am so excited!

Date Night

Thursday afternoon Rick called me from work and told me he wanted to take me on a date.  We haven't had an alone date for a couple of weeks so I was ready and excited to be able to go.  Our first stop was at the top of the JSMB where we had dinner at The Garden.  This was our amazing view from our table.  Next week temple square will be ablaze with beautiful lights.  The workers have been putting them up since September.  A LOT of work!

 

 

 

Next we headed over to the City Creek to browse.  This outdoor mall is so beautiful.  Next to Nordstroms is a fountain that had an incredible show with water and fire accompnied by The Nutcracker Suite.  Really Cool!

 

 

Another neat sight were the display windows outside of  Macys.   These incredible ornaments are made completely of candy.  Notice Santa's beard is made of candy canes.  This one was my favorite!

 

 

This snowflake was made of cruswhed rock candy.  I'm thinking that the small silver snowflakes are Jordan Almonds:)

 

 

This ornament is a tribute to Utah.  It is a beehive with a bunch  of Santa bees hanging on and around it.  The yellow part is gummy lemons and the brown is crushed rock candy.  The top is made of swedish fish.  If your in town for the holiday stop and see these cool spinning ornaments.

 

 

Lastly, Rick and I took a romantic horse and buggy ride.  We rode around the temple and then rode up City Creek Canyon.  I don't believe I have been up this street before.  It was very quaint with the creek running down the middle of the street surrounded by grass and trees.  It was a quiet neighborhood with beautiful old homes.

 

 

Here we are under the lamplight of Memory Grove.

 

 

                            Thanks hun, for a fun night!  I love, love, love to be with you!

FROM FLUFFY TO FLAT

You know those old Pert commercials from the '80's where it shows a person with straight hair and then in the next frame their hair is all curly and bouncy and they excitedly say,  "I went from flat to fluffy!"  Well, the other night we had a "I went from fluffy to flat!" moment with  our Gary boy. He has been growing his hair out for quite some time and let me tell you it was SHAGGY!   I  have been encouraging him to cut it for at least two months but last week  (after he had been using my hair straightener...yes, truly he was using MY straightener.  I think it was to create something akin to a Justin Beiber look) he said to me that he was going to cut it by the end of the week.  Finally on Sunday night he halfheartedly said, "Let's cut it tomorrow."  I didn't know if it was really going to happen or not but on Monday night when we were visiting the Bakers he was peer pressured into it. (Thanks Aunt Kath, Jenny and Kallie) 

We had to get a picture to remember the moment and then.........

 

 

off came the hair!  

Man, he is such a handsome thing.  I don't know if he had next morning regrets (although I am pretty sure he did) because he was up early the next morning to travel to New Mexico to work for the week.  I haven't talked to him since.  I hope he's not missing his curly locks too much:) 

 

Our Little Halloween Pumpkin

Kendra has been bringing Rafe over in the evenings because Brach works until 3 AM.  We have really enjoyed having them with us.  I love to hold and snuggle that little guy.  Aunt Kathy bought a couple of halloween outfits so I thought I would show the world our little Halloween Pumpkin!  Rafe loves to have his hands up by his face and he loves to have his legs in the frog position as you can see in the first picture.  This one was taken on Halloween Eve:)  Sorry I don't know how to turn it.

 

 

 

For Halloween night she brought him over in this cute ourfit.  He was REALLY darling!  Unfortunately he peed out of it before Aunt Kathy could see him in it:)  After passing out candy to  all 7 of our trick or treaters we went to visit the Bakers and then came home to fall asleep to "Arsenic and Old Lace".  All in all a good night!

 

Halloween Party 2012

 

I wanted to post about our Halloween Party.  This  is our 23rd year of hosting this party and it sure has been fun throughout the years!  Most everyone came in costume although they didn't stay on to long because everyone wanted to be comfortable throughout the night.  We had a dinner of appetizers (taquitos, buffalo bites, artichoke dip with bread, and shrimp cocktail),  soups (chicken noodle, clam chowder, and broccoli cheese), breadsticks, and of course our traditional homemade rootbeer.  We also had a couple of fun desserts to try.   Food, Family, and Fun!!

 

Darla and Larry came in their Roman motifs.  Darla looked great with her Cleopatra outfit and Larry was a hoot with the bush on his head:)  Darla took the vines off of her draperies and didn't want to cut them so he came with the whole vine on his head!  It made for a good laugh!

 

 

Trent ande Kathy were a car and freshener.  Kathy was plenty hot in  all that fleece and couldn't wait to get that tree off of her:)

 

 

Rick and I went for comfort this year.  A surgeon and his assistant:)

 

 

Dennis and Karen had some fun masks this year.  I love Karens'  feathers and just yesterday I found Dennis' horns tucked away behind one of my decorative pumpkins.  If you guys want it back you know where to find it:)

 

 

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the whole group.  I only got one shot (that Gary took) and it came out blurry.  Darrell had a great costume.  He looked like Dumbledore and DeeAnn was his beautiful assistant.  Brad did NOT come in costume (that hasn't changed in the last 10 years:) but Ruth came as a witch with a green painted face.  Ken and Robbie came also came and that was fun.  This year we missed Hal and Janis and Brent and Lar.   We played a few games (which I just couldn't get into for worrying over Kendra being in labor but hopefully everyone enjoyed visiting and just being together.  Thanks for all that did come and we'll plan another one for next year!! 

A night and day in the city

A few weeks ago Rick and I had a little getaway into Salt Lake for the night.  We set out Friday evening and had a dinner at our favorite restaurant "The Five Alls".  We had a window seat and got to look out over the valley as the sun set.  It was very romantic:)  The Five Alls has been a fun place that we eat at for special occasions maybe twice a year.  We love the food and the atmosphere.  After dinner we drove down the street to our room at the Anniverary Inn.  This time we stayed in the Lake Powell Room.  It wasn't my favorite but it was one we hadn't stayed in before so that was fun. 

 

The next morning we went over to Pioneer Park for the Farmer's Market that they have each week through the summer and fall.  We had a great time sampling the goods.  We came home with some spicy salsa, some lavender oil, a cucumber, and a plethora of bakery goods.  I love those huge loves of bread that the bakeries sell.  Of course,  we had to get the pastries as well:)

 

 

Here's Rick chatting with the Italian guys

 

 

Street side at the Market...love the look on Rick's face:)

 

 

After the market we went over to Tracy Aviary to check out the birds. 

The older I get the more fascinated I am with different birds.

Here's Rick ande the flamingos.

 

 

After the Aviary we stopped for lunch.  We found a great new pizza place downtown called Settabello.  If you like authentic Italian pizza this is the place.  We sat at the counter and watched our pizzas being made and then put into a 1000 degree oven for about 1 minute. 

 

 

Yep,  it was good pizza:)