Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving.  Our cousins,  Kathy and Patrick Jones moved from San Francisco to idaho falls and hosted a lovely evening.  It was great food,  great conversation,  and most importantly,  great family!
 
I'm also very greatful for this season of gratitude and that I have a loving Father in Heaven who gave us His Son to save us all!

And I'd like to share my first attempt at making and baking my first apple pie from scratch.  I made pie filling and then a week later for Thanksgiving made my own pie crust.  On a side note I think pie crust is the worst part of the pie and so I attempted to make a yummy crust by adding some orange zest and cinnamon to it.  And although it sunk down and lost it's proper pie crust shape,  it actually tasted great!

CHRISTmas preparations

We are slowly getting ready for Christmas this year.  Each Monday night for family home evening we do another Christmas activity.  

I love when we decorate the tree and we get to pull out the ornaments from years past.  I love the lights and especially the excitement in my kids eyes.  We sing Christmas songs and talk about the symbols of Christmas.  I love that the ever green tree signifies life and that the pine needles point towards Heaven,  which is where we should always be pointing!

My new little niece

I'm an aunt again! That is such a special title that i don't know can be topped beside perhaps being able to say that you are a grandma!

But anyways, my sweet little sister, Sharon, had her baby. I love being able to hold Penny. She is such a pretty girl! So happy for my sister and her family!

Christmas random photos but goodies!

Here are a bunch of pictures from while we visited our family in Washington for Christmas. We had a lot of fun playing together, eating together, celebrating together. I love my family so much!

Family bike rides

Now, we go for bike rides through the park and Eli stays right up with us without a problem.

On hills he has to walk his bike up because it's still hard for him, and the first time going down a steep hill he panicked for a moment and started dragging his feet (poor shoes) and wabbled a bunch, but Jared was there to catch him. He didn't have to, however, because Eli regained control and put his feet safely back on the paddles and came to a safe stop. (The funny part about the whole thing was there was a group of people on the side of the road at the park, drinking "their special juice", who at first were just as scared as i was that Eli was going to totally biff it, but when he pulled out of it were cheering for him. It was cool of them to cheer Eli on like that!! )

We asked if he was scared, he said "ya," we asked,  "do you want to try the hill again?" and Eli said, "ya," and  he had no issues the second time through.  Such a brave little boy!