An update...finally

Things have been a little busy around here lately, but we want to have these memories so we're blogging for FHE tonight. :) :)

First we are going to blog about Thanksgiving 2012.

We had a wonderful time with our Shumway cousins. We have some wonderful stories to tell.

Day 2

I decided that I needed to fight my headache with food so I went down to breakfast. I was joined by Beth, who sends a special hello to Bob, and all of Neal's children, most of Perry's children, and all of Tyler's children. You should see Ben and Peter! They are so grown up, and big men. Very muscley . . . is that a word? Today we will go to Welfare square. Fun! With about 40 people. Oh, dear . . .

At breakfast, Neal asked if we have jumper cables because someone left his lights on last night, so we have already charged up his car. Thanks for Dad being prepared. We have been eating in the hotel, oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, waffles. Pretty good. :)

Yesterday, we spent the afternoon in Grandma's house with two dogs. By the night, Dad and Amy were sneezing, and I had a headache. We were in Grandma's living room, talking with people playing the piano, and it was really hard to hear. :) Now I know I'm getting old. Ha ha! The dogs were Brenda's and Julia's dogs. Julia and Nick live in Bountiful and they have a cute dog. They seem really happy. Julia will graduate next month, and she majored in history with an emphasis in family history. She just got a job in Salt Lake doing genealogical research as a consultant and she can work from home. It will be perfect if she has a baby. Perry's youngest is Henry, and he teases the dogs. He loves them really tightly and aggressively, and Max cries when Henry gets ahold of him. :) Thank goodness, Max is doing fine. :) And Henry is learning to be gentle.

Brenda is looking great, and she is full of funny stories and jokes. We just love it! She and I wore our matching necklaces. We had Grandpa take pictures of us at the Salt Lake temple and we used one of them for our Christmas card. At first we were going to use a Spain picture and photocrop Josh's head in, but it looked so funny! It was windy yesterday, but we still loved walking around temple square and looking at the temple. We loved the tabernacle choir broadcast; it was beautiful and especially with the orchestra.

Grandma made yummy chicken and peas and carrots for dinner, and then we had homemade chocolate pudding for dessert. It was so good!

So that was our day. Dad and I had a hard time staying up to 9:00 last night, and when our ipad said 9:00 we immediately fell into bed and slept. Ha ha!

Day 3

We have lots of stories today!

We took two tours that were led by sister missionaries. One was at welfare square and the other was at the humanitarian center. At the end of the tours, the sisters always ask us what we think and if we can share the message with someone else. So one sister asked, "Does anyone want to share an example of how following the prophet has helped your life?" As always, our whole family is quiet. 40 people just standing there, hoping someone will answer. Then, Henry (Perry's 5-year-old) raised his hand and said, "Well, a person robbed a bank one time." We all just burst out laughing. Oh, my!

More funny stories. I bought two Jazz shirts for Dad and me, and the salesman gave me 4 free tickets. Well, I almost didn't take them because I felt guilty leazving the reunion. Josh didn't want to go, so we thought of asking if anyone wanted to go. Grandpa's face lit up; he was excited. He ended up taking Amy, Peter, and Skylar (Teisha's husband). They had a wonderful time. Grandpa was riveted with his binoculars the whole time. Peter got a giant Monster drink and was HYPER! Skylar thought he was in heaven; he knew all the facts about the teams. And Grandpa drove like a maniac. Fast and funny! The grandkids hope they are as spry as grandpa when they are almost 80.

We did the usual, had chocolate milk and cheese at the welfare square. We shopped at DI. Great! Grandma made wonderful beef tacos with super tender beef.

Day 4

Yesterday was a funny day. We began with a tour of a candy factory. It was an excellent tour and we went in groups of 10. Shelly needed to go and get Tyler at the airport, so she was in the first group, and Larry, Amy and I went in that group. Poor Josh, he had to come in a later group but Josh is so patient. So anyway, we had Shelly's little four-year-old on our tour. His name is David. We saw the jelly bean room, then the taffy room, and finally, the chocolate room. Then, our tour guide showed us the HUGE bags of sugar. She asked if we had any questions. David said, "Yes, why do you keep the sugar here?" The tour guide looked perplexed for a minute and then said, "Where do you think we should keep it?" David pointed to the other side of the factory and said, "Over there.," Our tour guide joked that she had just been through Stump the Tour guide. So funny! By the way, we are talkiing about TONS of sugar.

Yesterday we went down to Provo. We saw Nate play the cello in a concert, and it was beautiful. He played some favorites like, Danny Boy. The concert was held in the Maeser buidling. It has been renovated since I was there and it is beautiful. This is the building where they held Grandma's graduation. Very cool! We bought some BYU mint truffles, and when we checked out, the lady gave us 10 tickets to the BYU basketball game tonight. We took Grandpa again because he seemed to like it so much. We kept winning tickets. Grandma thinks it is because Utah is trying to repair their broken relationship with Wyoming. Ha ha!

Josh bought BYU sweatpants, a BYU shirt, and a BYU sweatshirt. We all think he looks like Kip now. :) :) Ha ha! We bought lots of candy to share at the factory, so be prepared. Ha ha! Grandma has been cooking some wonderful food. Yesterday, we had homemade guac that was almost as good as yours, Paul.

Day 5

Joke from Henry age 5: Knock, knock. Who's there? A beef walking around a river.

Yesterday, we met Millie and her fiance. They are the cutest couple. Larry and Amy went to the BYU basketball game. Josh got sick with a fever, so he and I spent the night relaxing at the hotel. Yesterday, there were about 50 people at the reunion, so we moved to the church. The kids played games, like tag and hide-and-go-seek. Henry poked Dad while he took a nap on the couch in the foyer. :) We went to the dinosaur museum. Neal pointed out that Utahns use 11% more of the earth's resources than their share. I have no idea how that statistic was created.

Grandma made ham and potatoes for 50 people. I told Grandpa it is like she is the one-woman midweek committee meeting chairman and the meetings happen twice daily. Wow! She is amazing. On the stage, there were curtains, and Henry wanted Amy to hide with him, wrapped in the curtains. It was so cute. The stage had this really high place that the boys set chairs on top of each other to climb up to, and it was scary. David routinely wandered into Grandma's street, and finally, Grandma yelled out, "David, you MUST get out of the street NOW." There were, as always, a few stressful moments. Ha ha! But David is still alive.

I talked with Pam and Claire a little. It was fun! Then, I played a betting game with Uncle Neal. You can imagine. He was awesome; he bet it all and CREAMED the rest of us. Cool! He bought it for his kids but he is worried that they will grow up to be gamblers. Larry and I talked with Tyler a lot about statistics; he still uses stats in his research. Fun!

Then we had a wonderful Christmas with our family in Laramie.