Thanksgiving '12

For Thanksgiving, we drove down to St. George to spend time with Loren's family. Once we got there Wednesday afternoon we chatted with the family a bit and then took Mary to the park since it was so beautiful outside. I think she enjoyed herself :)

 

Later on we all played Dice, when Danny and Bri (Loren's brother and his wife) drove into town from Phoenix! After dinner we played Beyond Balderdash--such a hilarious evening! Shame you can't capture those family time moments but it was a cherished night :)

The next day, Loren, Papa Stone and I went to Kanab (small town close-ish to the Grand Canyon and Lake Powell) to clean their vacation home before another family came into town that day. It was a B-eautiful day!

After a few hours of traveling and cleaning, we made it back home to help out making a dish or two. Here's the lovely newlyweds fixing the mashed potatoes. Check out the muscles on these two! ;)

After a yummy meal, we played Mexican Train dominoes! It was a really close game, well not for me, but half the group was neck and neck!

Poor Loren--I made him change into his nice clothes for Thanksgiving and pictures. He was a good sport and doesn't he look dashing? :)

The next day we said hi to Loren's old boss who's going on a mission with his wife to Bulgaria! Then we hung out to "play" with the family's chickens!

Making sure the chicken didn't poop on him, hehe.

The lone white chicken!

Along our trip, we made a short stop at Cedar Breaks National Park. I've never been so it was an adventure :) It was a gorgeous day, albeit brisk and windy!

Luckily for us, there was a couple there at the same time so we took pictures for each other. I like those making "deals."

These were our "model"/we're enjoying nature pictures.

This is a picture that I took, turned Black and White and somewhat, actually very amateur-ly edited, and submitted to a Utah BW contest on Instagram. No luck getting picked. Oh well.
   

That Saturday night we had a date night with our BFF couple, John and Eva Fisher, who are visiting since their relocation in June to West Palm Beach, Florida for his job. We got delicious Zupas (take out, since we left their baby with her parents--first time they've gone somewhere without him! Big step!) and played a game called Carcassone. Think Settlers of Catan but without resources to make things. It was fun but I'm not the best at strategy games. Although our third time playing I got second! 

Eva and her cute niece, who's the spitting image of the adorable young daughter in We Bought a Zoo.

Sunday came around and we went to Eva's home ward so that her son Keith could be blessed. Loren was invited to be in the circle, which was so nice. Here's the pair of them now! Loren will make a cute daddy some day :)

After another round or two of Carcassone, we talked and said our good-byes. We'll see Eva again in May--yay!! As we were heading home, we saw these awesome lights! I love Christmas!

And that's a wrap! Our Thanksgiving was short but so fun filled! I loved about every minute of it!  The only down side was my cat allergies from the weekend turned into a cold/sinus infection that lasted the whole rest of the week! :( I even stayed home from work one day because I couldn't shake it and didn't want to get the kids in my class sick; although they might have exacerbated the illness. Staying home was really helpful to getting over it and it turned out great for me because my co-worker said it was a day from hell. Glad I missed out on that! ^_^