Pilgrims and Indians

Cutest Pilgrims and Indian ever!

Christmas time! Christmas time! Christmas time is here! :) I can't believe that it's almost December - woohoo! This is my favorite time of the year. Parties, desserts, family time, traditions, presents... etc, etc.... there's just so much I love about the holidays. Thanksgiving is definitely one of them and we had a great one. I was sooo happy because Ben ended up getting Thanksgiving Day off (hooray!). I was bummed at first because he was supposed to go in on Friday to work, so he headed off Friday morning around 6:30 and much to my surprise was home shortly after 9am. I guess they got through with their patients and Ben got to have a super short day! And he had Saturday and Sunday off as well, so easy peasy. :) I was just so relieved and happy to have Ben home with us for Thanksgiving. What a blessing! We headed to Gilbert on Wednesday evening to spend a couple nights at Ben's parents house. We spent that night making my mother-in-law's famous potato rolls (love them!). On Thursday we cooked most of the day and somehow it wasn't chaotic and was actually relaxing. It was probably due to the fact that we were a small group and we weren't having tons of extended family come visit, so there wasn't much pressure to have stuff done at a certain time or anything. The menu was yummy and Ben and I did lots of our favorite Thanksgiving recipes: chestnut apple stuffing (THE best!!), cranberry sauce, green beans with tomatoes, maple glazed turkey, cider gravy, sweet potatoes with marshmallows and of course mashed potatoes, pie, and all the yummy potato rolls (you'll notice from the links that we're a little obsessed with martha recipes). It was quite the feast and we enjoyed plenty of leftovers later. That evening Ben's parents were super nice and sent us off to the movies to see Bond while they stayed with the kids and cleaned up dinner. Awesome! Aren't they the coolest?! :) I love this new James Bond, btw... way cooler than Pierce Brosnan! On Friday some of the family did Black Friday shopping - I avoided that this year, but Ben did go run a quick errand to Walmart during all the craziness and happened to get Kung Fu Panda for 9 dollars. Good deal! :) The girls started up work on a new sewing project - we're making Happy Birthday banners - we got a good chunk of the work done over the weekend and they're going to be super cute when they're all done! We also all went and saw Bolt - cute movie... the hamster is hillarious! Friday evening we went to the Mesa Temple to see them turn on the Christmas lights - it was a lovely evening - just cold enough to need a sweater but we weren't freezing our hiney's off (not that I don't LOVE seeing the temple lights in Salt Lake, but that's always part of the experience... watching the lights while feeling like your appendages are going to fall off... but it's a great excuse for hot chocolate!). Saturday morning we went to the zoo and once again, the weather was great! The kids really loved the carousel and we even got to pet the sting rays. We also did some shopping and ate out for dinner and soon we headed back to our neglected house. Today we got started decorating for Christmas, but we still need to hang the ornaments on the tree. It's a lot of work to decorate for Christmas! But I sure to love the end result. Hooray for the holidays!