Thankful

I feel like I have so much to be thankful for this year!  We finally got the answer to our prayers and are living a 'normal' life!  We have a house, an income, a schedule and can plan for our future.  Dave has a job and I have my dream job of being a full-time mom.  We are getting to know new people everyday and enjoying the most gorgeous weather here!

My parents and little sisters came to visit us and enjoy the weather.  I loved having them here!  It was so much fun to be the hosts.

We 'hiked' around a nature preserve in our neighborhood to work up an appetite.  Hallie was so cute making lots of faces.

Apparently my camera was hi-jacked by these 2 nuts and I found some crazy photos when I went through them!  I love my sisters!

Thanksgiving dinner turned out perfectly!  I don't think I even planned it going that smoothly!  I was so glad to have lots of help to prepare and especially to clean.  The meal  fed 8 adults for over three meals!  That makes the preparation even more worth it!

 We played 'cracker whacker' to work off the calories.  It is every bit as fun as it sounds.  You string a saltine cracker to a belt loop so it hangs about knee height.  Then with 1/2 a noodle you whack away.  Last one without a whacked cracker wins!

The rest of the weekend was a blur of puzzles, sitting around, black Friday shopping, garage sale shopping and and eating!!

The Saturday night was just perfect!  We made gingerbread houses.  Then headed into Tempe.  We hiked the "A" for ASU and saw a gorgeous sunset (not too uncommon here) and then walked down the hill to watch a festival of lights parade.  I thought it was so much fun!  The cars, people and floats were decorated with lots of lights.  People were dressed as Angels, snowflakes, presents, the Grinch, Christmas trees, etc, etc.  It was totally different than a summer parade (except I was plenty warm wearing capri's and a T-shirt.  My parents treated us to delicious burritos 10 steps from where we sat at the parade and then we headed to the lights at the temple (See previous post).  It was a perfect end to a wonderful weekend.