Thanksgiving Weekend With All The Relatives

We had a crazy, fun, exciting Thanksgiving weekend.  We had Thanksgiving lunch with my family on Thursday.  Following a longstanding tradition, Santa's elves showed up right after to ask everyone what they want for Christmas and give them a bag of candy.

After lunch, we visited with everyone for a while and then headed off to see Wayne's family.  We arrived in time for pie and playing with cousins.  Daniel and Benjamin had so much fun with their cousins that they also spent most of Friday playing with their cousins from Bear Lake.

Saturday was a really special day because Daniel was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by Wayne.  We are so happy that he chose to take this step in his life.  Benjamin can hardly wait until he is eight years old so that he can be baptized as well.  Here are Wayne and Daniel dressed in white:

Don't they just look happy?

Daniel wants to say "Thanks" to everyone who helped make it a special day.  Because of the Thanksgiving weekend, we had a huge turnout.  It was fun to see so many family members there, especially those who came from far away places like Texas, Arizona, and Las Vegas.

 

This is most of Wayne's family that came.  

 

We got video but no still shots of my family at the baptism because there were so many people.  And my camera was having issues anyway.  Tomorrow we have one more family party, this time in honor of my newest baby niece.  Oh, and it's somebody's birthday.  Could that be my wonderful husband Wayne?

 

Eight Is Great!

Daniel had a fabulous eighth birthday last week.  We started off the day by going on his class field trip to see "Stellaluna" at the Scera Theatre in Orem.  How many kids get a field trip on their birthday?  Here's Daniel on the bus with two of his favorite friends:

After school, Daniel had his piano lesson.  Some kids might not like having a piano lesson on their birthday, but Daniel loves anything and everything to do with the piano.  After piano, we went to eat at the Pizza Factory where they made Daniel a pizza in the shape of an eight.  He got a variety of presents, including a Cub Scout book and uniform.  He already went to his first pack meeting, and he is excited to be starting Scouts.

We didn't have a party with friends this year because we will be having a huge family party when Daniel gets baptized over the Thanksgiving weekend.  Instead, we went to Trafalga with just our immediate family because Daniel really wanted to miniature golf.  We also had a small family party at our house with a fabulous ice cream cake from Cold Stone.  Yum!

We love you tons and tons, Daniel!

Halloween is over and done!

I love Halloween.  Really, I do.  It's a holiday with low expectations but lots of possibilities.  I always participate in at least a couple of Halloween parties.  We often have a costume party with my extended family, and we usually invite Wayne's siblings over for a mystery dinner.  This year, we had to make other plans, but we still had lots of fun!

Our first party was the Halloween Party at the church.  It's always a little weird that we even have Halloween parties at our church.  Yes, I am still in charge of our ward activities.  This was mostly just a chance for the kids to get dressed up and play some games.  We started with a costume parade.  Then, we let the kids go from station to station doing things like tossing rings around pumpkins and playing giant Twister.  If you ever want to rent a giant Twister, try Outdoors Unlimited at BYU.  It's huge.  I think Benjamin was in awe of it here:

Our next Halloween celebration was the stuff at school.  Wayne and I both went to it.  Benjamin had a costume parade with the other kindergarteners.  Daniel had a singing and dancing performance with the second graders.  And I helped the kindergarteners play Boo Bingo in their classroom.

On Friday, we went to Wayne's office for trick or treating.  Benjamin insisted that we all choose costumes with a theme this year.  We went with Toy Story.  Benjamin and I had "official" Disney costumes.  We bought Daniel's penguin on ebay.  Daniel is Wheezy, in case you couldn't tell.  And Wayne's costume is a combo of stuff he already had in his closet and stuff we found at D.I.

On Halloween, we carved our pumpkins.  And we went trick or treating again.  And by then, I'll admit it, I was pretty much sick of Halloween.  But now, a few days after, Benjamin and I are already dreaming up ideas for costumes for next year.

Will you post our blog button on your blog?

I've had a few people ask for a blog button to help advertise our adoption. Wayne had the day off today, and he helped me make one. It links to our adoption profile. So, if you want it, here it is!

This is the code snippet:

<a href='https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/22920363/ourMessage.jsf'><img alt=' ' height='220' id='Image1_img' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidP-8It96EVZPItx0sHc6X-OCLwxaDHXht5CEpHe3NVG_HCCWqeXMdlC0_f_uUNSKPFgu8lsDsm0nZ_KcKPBrNlwjidk0dMd1kt26S_b1ryMvCuZgdUmF_M1FH9T8CWoWJlGmwnQhN4bbl/s220/blogbutton.jpg' width='189' target="_blank"/></a>

It looks like this (but you can make it smaller):

You just add it as a html gadget.  Or you can use in in a blog entry. Thanks!