Thanksgiving

We had a great, filling, exhausting, fun Thanksgiving here in Texas! We had our two favorite new friends, Elder Lemon & Elder Rogers, over to feast. (they wrote our names down on their dinner list & then told us)

We made dinner for 2 days! We made turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, rolls, broccoli, pumpkin pie, sweet potato dessert. In fact we were cooking so much that we forgot to take any pictures! So here's a picture of
Jessie's placemats & Tyler making rolls.

Jessie made one for everyone with each name written on them. Even the missionaries got their own personal Jessie work of art with "missionary" written in her special spelling style. They took them home so I don't have a photo. Ty helped make everything he could! What a helper! Matthew & Annie did dishes & then more dishes & yet we still have more to do! Ahhh! Cameron & Jack played football & more football.

Now we are all too stuffed to move! Ash's turkey was amazing again. He's an amazing cook & he wonders why I don't want to cook. I did make pies & stuffing. Our favorite new dish is a recipe my visiting teaching companion gave me. Sweet potato casserole! YUMMMMM!!! It is more of a dessert to me with a praline type crust on top & filled with a sweet vanilla sweet potato filling. It's our new Texas Thanksgiving tradition. I'll try to remember to post the recipe because it's worth a try & easy to make.
Happy Thanksgiving from the Oviatts in Texas!!!!

P.S. I just took this picture of what Tyler is doing now. :)

Flat Stanley

A friend of ours in Utah sent us Flat Stanley for a school project. We took him around with us to some spots we like in Round Rock. I thought it was a great way to share some of our experiences here. Here is what we did:

We went to Tyler's football game. Football is a big deal down here. Ty plays for his middle school, the Walsh Wildcats. They won the game & Ty had a great game. We go to at least 2 football games each week. Matthew's team was off this week so we only went to 1 game. It was a slow week.

We went to Round Rock High School where Annie & Matthew go to school. They are the dragons. Matthew plays football there & Annie plays tennis & is on the yearbook staff. RRHS is 99 years old this year! It seems more like a Jr college than a high school with its layout and the way it's run. They have a lot of history & traditions. Next week is Homecoming and they have a parade and some other traditions we have yet to understand. Of course they have a big homecoming football game. Go Dragons!

We also went to Jack, Jessie & Cameron's school, Old Town Elementary. We live in the Old Town part of the city. In fact we live really close to THE round rock! It's a rock that's round in the middle of Brushy Creek. When the cattle drives & settlers travelled through this area they found that the safest and easiest way to cross the creek was at the round rock. So the area became known as Round Rock. Back to the school, the playground is nestled in the trees. It's really fun! Of course there is a football/soccer field out of the trees. Jack spends his recess playing football. They are the Old Town Texans.

We went grocery shopping at our new favorite grocery store, HEB plus. H.E.B. you say each letter. It is a Texas grocery store that was started long ago, not too far from Austin, by a man name Harold E. Butts. Aka Harry Butts. No joking!!! It's a great store and the plus is their super store. We visit HEB several time a week.

We wanted to show Stanley some of our favorite food here in Texas. BBQ is our favorite but unfortunately we didn't get BBQ this week. But we did get Bush's chicken! Our family loves Bush's chicken & Popeye's chicken. We took Stanley to Bush's for Happy Hour where we get chicken tender rolls for $1. I wish we could share the flavor of this awesome chicken! Bush's is a local business started in a town located about an hour north of here.

Our favorite treat here are Round Rock doughnuts! A local business that is huge here. I can't explain them but they are yummy! A Round Rock tradition. There is only one location but it's big! They have a drive thru & are open from 6am until 8pm. There are always cars in the drive thru. Yum!

There are water towers all over Texas. Most of them are a lot taller than the one we took Stanley to in downtown Round Rock. Most water towers hold the water we use here, this one is older and is used as a decoration not for water. We can see it from miles around and we really love it. We don't see mountains here, we see water towers.

We played with Stanley in our yard that is full of trees. We live in a neighborhood called "The Woods" & it fits! We have a lot of tall oak trees that are really old. In our front yard we have a crepe myrtle tree that has flowers on it all summer & still has flowers on it now. It's taller than our 2 story house! We let Stanley climb up it since that is what Jack & Tyler love to do.

Texas has a lot of the same things as Utah. We have Wal-Mart, Lowe's, McDonald's, Sam's Club, and more. The people here are really nice & love Texas. The Texas flag is everywhere! The weather is warm down here. It was 84 degrees yesterday, Jack & Ty went swimming. There are a lot of things to see & do here, we didn't even go to Austin. Austin is 30 miles south of us and it's a great city to visit. Maybe next time we'll get down there. The biggest difference here is that there are no mountains! You can see for miles with no mountains in site! There are some hills here but they aren't very big. It's been strange to not have the beautiful mountains to look at. But we love exploring new places & meeting new people! We really love it here!

Fast offerings in Texas

Fast offerings here are a family duty. It's Tyler's duty but Matthew is his partner & mom or dad are the chauffeurs. If they walked the route it could take several hours. Today it was Mom. I really enjoyed spending time with my boys as they did their priesthood duties. Several people told them that they paid already and they didn't need to come to them. What they don't realize is that collecting fast offerings teaches my sons to serve the Lord and their fellow men. And makes their Mom proud!

Matthew at the Palace

Last night Matthew played his fifth game overall but his first game at the 'Palace' also known as Kelly Reeves stadium.

The stadium situation here:
The Palace is a high school football stadium owned by Round Rock school district. It's amazing! It seats 11,000! It is the home field for 4 of the 5 teams in the district. Our high school is the only high school with a its own stadium - Dragon Stadium. Dragon stadium is also used by the other 4 teams as a home field. Dragon stadium isn't nearly as amazing as the Palace but it's still pretty big. All of the high schools have smaller stadiums and nice synthetic turf fields. They are their practice fields & where the middle school teams play. Ty plays there! But he will play in the palace in the playoffs.

Back to Matthew
Anyway, Matthew's been playing on the Round Rock HS freshman A team. Here they keep all the Freshman on the Freshman team & don't move them up to JV or Varsity. He's playing right tackle on the offensive line. At first he wasn't very happy about playing O line. He loves defense! But he's done a great job and seems to be enjoying it. He protects the QB and blocks for the running backs. He has never met a defensive lineman he couldn't block or knock down. He dominates! He's getting faster, stronger, and more confident. When I watch him I'm amazed that this is the same kid who laughed every time he made a tackle or scored a basket. He's focused & serious.

His team won 46-7. They dominated. They had lost the previous 2 games. This was a great win! They are now 3-2 on the season and 1-0 in district play. Go Rock! (that's what they yell here, we keep saying "go eagles", whoops!) #73 OVIATT

Guess what Jessie lost!

She's so excited! The tooth fairy brought her money and she doesn't pass up a chance to show off her new smile!

Tyler's first football game in Texas

Down here in Texas the 7th graders play on the middle school football team. There is a 7th grade A & B team and a 8th grade A & B team. They run the teams a lot like the high school football teams. His first period class is football. Ty goes to school at 6:30 every morning to start practice & they practice until the end of 1st period.

Tonight was his first game. Ty is playing nose guard on the A team. He's not very happy about it. He also played weak side D end. He still played great tonight! He was through the line in the QB's face all night. He hurried the QB and was in on at least 5 tackles. His team won 34-0! Go Wildcats! Go Tyler!!! #86

Pictures

Here are a few pictures of the kids to go with the last blog post.