Together Beyond Forever: Thanksgiving and the Start of December

Thanksgiving was wonderful. I got a surprise call from my little sister the day before she was supposed to drive down saying that she was an hour away...luckily I'd already cleaned the house. :) yay!

Once upon a time I decided to try to make cheesy-potato-broccoli soup...and when I asked for three medium potatoes, Beth brought me goldi-peel and the three tubers. In the end, the soup turned out AMAZING...and Albert has been begging me to make it again and again ever since. :)

I also made a cherry pie...and even did the awesome lattice work. I'm so proud!

I also made my mom's special occasion rolls (called icebox rolls)...but they take forever so...not sure when I'll do THAT again....

while beth and I were waiting on the rolls, we had a "girls' night" and watched Tinker Bell and the Secret of the Wings and painted our nails. :)

John LOVES mac and Cheese

While we do not have photographic evidence of it, we had thanksgiving lunch at Albert's Aunt Sonia's house (which we helped a lot in the making...and I cut my finger slicing potatoes for mashing)...a few hours later we went to my Grandma Evans's house for Thanksgiving dinner. :) both meals were AMAZING!!!

So...Albert and I decided that our splurge for this season was going to be a new Christmas tree...a fake one. So we searched all of the Black Friday sales and went to several stores to see what their trees looked like...at 8 we traveled to Wal-Mart because we'd seen some other items that we were in need of (new pillows, new towels, etc)...unfortunately, they ran out of pillows before we could get to them, and apparently the shipment of towels never came in. So, we decided to go get our tree at Kohls (we had a $50 gift card someone left at the library and still had not picked up after about a month.) Anyways, so we decided ot make it a date and go to the movies...and we did. it was nice. :) Afterwards we still had about an hour until Kohls opened up...so we sat in the car and played games on my iPad...then got in line. When we got in and were the first ones to the trees...and we noticed this brown box on top of the other boxes that were supposed to be on sale (so said the ad). It had more tips and more lights than the others...and we were worried it'd cost a bunch more than we'd planned for...but we asked one of the workers and she said that if it was in the pile it was going to be the same price. SCORE! we only ended up paying about $30 out of our pocket for the tree

our happy receipt.

last year's tree (we used it to put gingerbread men on)

the tree we bought

all lit up...I convinced Albert that it was my family's tradition to decorate the tree the day after Thanksgiving...then mom had to ruin it by admitting we do it the Monday after...ah well. :)

Johnathan liked the ornaments

despite these pictures, he quickly learned to not pull the ornaments off the tree...and that they were not edible (caught him in a corner trying to eat one of the fake apples haha)

our little sneak-thief soon realized that the gingerbread men on the other tree were edible and we would often catch him swiping one off the tree and then escaping to eat it. :)

Beth playing guitar.

Mexican Beth...she'd been having a discussion with her then boyfriend on whether or not he'd like her better if she were Mexican.

It was a GREAT Thanksgiving! We're looking forward to giving more thanks with our wonderful families as much as we can in the future (just realized next year might be our last year here in Utah to enjoy TWO Thanksgiving celebrations AH!)

Activities at the start of December:
We went and watched Arthur Christmas at the Zion's Bank Employee's kids' Christmas celebration. When I say "we" I mean me, Albert's 13 year-old sister Kimmi, 5 year-old Sammi, 3 year-old Melissa, and Johnathan. Kimmi was a HUGE help...and honestly, Johnathan was the worst of the kids. After the movie, Santa came out. Johnathan was just as pleasant as last year. :)

John and the girls with Santa

Sammi and Melissa

once upon a time I caught John sitting on the couch just reading his kitten book...this is right after that when he caught me trying to take a picture of him

he LOVES to wrap himself up in his blankets. :)

So this year, I convinced Albert that I should make Gingerbread men... (still working on the gingerbread house/train) I even got him to decorate his own gingerbread man (but just one haha)

Albert's gingerbread man...he happily exclaimed "it's me!" when asked if he were going to give his gingerbread man some pants he replied that he was just wearing a REALLY long shirt.