Thanksgiving and Family Pictures...

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving!! We were so blessed to have all of our family members home at the same time. We had a crazy, whirlwind week that just didn't seem long enough. Chelsea was here for four days - and we enjoyed her so much! We ate (of course), watched movies, visited grandparents and friends, took family pictures, had many deep conversations into the wee hours of the morning and had lots of good laughs! My girls don't get to see their aunt Chelsea enough...but they just ate her up!! They get pretty attached to people and it made me sad when they woke up the morning Chelsea left and they were searching the house for her. "Where Chelsea go??" Heartbreaking...especially when it is unknown how soon they may get to see her again. They had fun playing with BrookLynn and Elle, of course. Their little eyes would light up whenever it was time to go see them. Pure excitement! It made my heart happy.

We were so lucky to have my family invited over to Leithead's for Thanksgiving dinner. It was so nice to only have to eat one meal and not have to race back and forth between families all day. Thank you Marla!!! Dinner was delicious...and as usual, we ate too much. In fact I am still eating too much!

As you can see in our family pics, Kacee made my hair beautiful again. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! Matty even got a trim...and Anastyn got her very first hair cut!! She was so excited. She went around for the next two days pointing to her hair and saying "hair!". Pretty cute. Kyle even got a hair cut (unwillingly)...but since it was after family pics you can't see...he has much shorter hair now. (Thank you, babe!! Love it!)

And, as I could have predicted, Kristin and I were only able to get one of our planned projects done. There is never enough time!! We completed the tu-tu's for the girls. That's it. Heaven knows how we are supposed to get 12 months worth of calendar pages for each of our mothers done in...lets see....24 days (we have done that before...but that was when we lived in the same town!!) I think we will have to enroll our moms in the "calendar page-of-the-month club" and just get one to them before its time to flip to the next month! Ha ha!!!

Now December has officially begun and I am in the middle of a Christmas decoration train wreck!! I did get the tree finished today...well, sort of. I usually put a whole bunch of ribbon on the tree, but I searched through all of my totes and boxes...no ribbon. I vaguely remember getting frustrated while removing the ribbon last year and throwing it all away! I must have been mad! Do you know how expensive ribbon is? So...the tree is finished...minus the ribbon.

Oh...and my Willow Tree Nativity (one of my most prized posessions)...well, when I started taking the figurines out of their boxes, I was sickened to find that three of them were broken. I wanted to cry! So I had to get the glue out last night and try to mend them. I hate moving...it is always your favorite things that get broken.

And then....grrrrrrr....ALL of my Christmas candles were melted!! Yeah...last January after I took all the Christmas stuff down, Kyle decided to put some of the totes up in the attic, which seemed like a good enough idea. We just didn't think it through to August in St. George, Utah. Uh-huh...candles don't keep their shape in 110 degree weather.

Anyways...its all good. Hopefully I can finish decorating tonight so that it doesn't look like a bomb went off in the living room anymore. And then I can start making a list of all the other things that need to be done by December 25th...oh boy...it's going to be a long list!!

Hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving. I know that I have a lot to be thankful for...and more than anything...I am thankful that I was able to spend the week with all of our loved ones!! Enjoy December...hope it is {mAgiCaL}!!