The Young and the Restless

Thanksgiving '09

While growing up I loved Thanksgiving at grandma and grandpa Jolley's house. There was always so much yummy food and a house full of cousins to play with. Living in AZ I miss being close to family, but especially during Thanksgiving. We've had several Turkey dinners all by our lonesomes and it doesn't feel much different than a Sunday dinner, so this year I was so excited to go up to Utah and spend Thanksgiving with tons of family and let my kids make some of those same memories that I have. As is tradition at Grandma and Angel's house, everyone is required to eat as much food as possible, play as many card games as possible and stay up as late as possible.

(our cute table buddies, Tyson and Dawn on their first Thanksgiving together as Mr. and Mrs.)

(our 10th Thanksgiving together as Mr. and Mrs.)

We also braved the cold and crowds for Black Friday. I may be cheap, but I'm not cheap enough to want to spend hours in lines just to save a few bucks, but I couldn't say no to some good crazy girl fun. We got 2 hours of sleep and it definately showed, oh good times. My prized purchase was my topiary tree (my heart belongs to Tai Pan) and I think everyone especially loved it since I was nice enough to let them hold it for the hour long drive home in a car packed with 9 girls and about 50 shopping bags. I amaze myself with how nice I am sometimes. After 5 hours of shopping and leaving our mark at Ihop we decided we had done enough damage for one morning. (Kylie and the girls set up a boutique selling free hand made creations and everyone, even Grandma, ended up sporting a hair bow, necklace or bowtie) (Maddox didn't understand the concept that everyplace isn't 70 degrees in November and he spent the majority of the days standing by the door crying to go out and play with the dog and cats) (I was so excited to wake up to a white world and I thought the kids would be thrilled to see snow. I thought they would be begging to go out and play in it, but I was the only one doing the begging. I couldn't convince them to even touch it because it was too cold. Whimps. I guess I'll settle for a picture up Cedar mountain. After driving 20 miles an hour for like 2 hours, we all decided snow is overrated.)