EARLY THANKSGIVING

This year since we are leaving Thanksgiving day for a trip to Paraguay the Phelps family (plus Sylar's girlfriend Sarah) had an early Thanksgiving celebration. We all (minus Alyssia) got together on Monday night and had a really nice time. We started out with dinner...ham, turkey and ALL the fixins' and ended with a family night and games. Rick took the day off and then Kendra and Kaitlyn came early and helped to get things ready. It was so great being with the family!! We all came with a little Thanksgiving thought to share and talked about the things that we are most grateful for. We also shared memories of Thanksgivings past. To end the evening we played a couple of games. We had fun vying for candy in the Thanksgiving Trivia game, and playing an autumn Pictionary. There was lots of competition and laughter. After the games........PIE!! Cream Cheese Pie is definitely my favorite:) I love having grown up kids! Our family is growing and it is a marvelous feeling. I am so very thankful for them and ALL of the MANY, MANY blessings that Heavenly Father bestows upon me:)

Shotgun Shooting

A few weeks ago Rick and I went shotgun shooting (well, I mostly watched) with Skylar & Sarah and Brach & Kendra. It was a cold, windy Saturday morning but we had fun being together:) We finished off the morning with some pancakes at Virg's.......mmmmmmmmmm!!

Halloween Party 2011

Last Friday night Rick and I had our annual Halloween party. We had a marvelous time!! We started out with dinner and had Chicken Tortilla Soup and Aunt DeeAnn's famous Clam Chowder with some breadsticks on the side. We had shrimp cocktail, taquitos, and orange chicken for appetizers. Rick was in charge of the homemade rootbeer (which is always a big hit) and Karen served up a baked apple dessert while Kathy made a pumpkin dessert as well as a chocolate bundt cake. All of Rick's siblings and their spouses were able to make it. (and most of them actually came in costume....yay) One thing that I LOVE about the Phelps family is that they are not afraid to laugh:) After dinner we played a game of clue charades and laughed like crazy!! In the pictures below you will see Hal acting out John Wayne (actually he thought he was acting out Roy Rogers but I guessed John Wayne and that turned out to be right). Brad and Rick are swinging their hips trying to be Elvis. Janice is in the dentist chair. Darrell and Darla are pretending to be cold. Karen is the headless horseman and Ruth is building an igloo. We had a great night with food, family and fun!!

PICKING PUMPKINS

October is Great!! Almost as good as September:) Kendra has been talking about going to the Pumpkin patch for 2 weeks now so we took some time last week to do it. We didn't get there until after dark so we searched the field by flashlight. It was sorta fun:) We bought a bunch. There were only 2 of the white ones left and they looked pretty sorry but we took them anyway. WE ended the night with a classic film....."Murder He Says". It's an old b&w with Fred MacMurray. A really silly film. It was good to laugh! We have some traditional films that we watch in October and this is one. Some of the others are...."The Ghost and Mr. Chicken", "Arsenic and Old Lace" (love this one), "Haunted Honeymoon", and "And Then There Were None". We won't get to them all but they are all fun to watch this time of the year!! We watched "Charade" (with Cary Grant) a few weeks ago and that's a great one too. Do you have any Halloween favorites to introduce to us?? Let me know. Halloween is almost over but we hopefully will get a few more in. FYI.....I love mysteries (especially b&w's) and I don't like 'em too intense.