Thanksgiving and Talks

Malachi loves Samuel's new skateboard

On Thanksgiving day, we were making vanilla ice cream, and Malachi loved licking the ice cream maker mixer.

Daddy helping Malachi put the star on top of the tree

Silly Malachi

Malachi putting Austin to bed

The kids following Travis around the tree, helping him with the lights.

So all the kids were out of school the whole week, except Austin.  She has a lot of school work to do, so she didn't really get much of a vacation.  We went to the YMCA on monday, and the kids all had a fun time, and I was able to get a workout in.  We shopped and cleaned on Tuesday and Wednesday.  Wednesday afternoon I started feeling sick, and ended up having diarrhea all night long.  Thursday morning was Thanksgiving, and even though I hadn't gotten much sleep, I still had to get up early and get right to work, since I didn't do any baking Wednesday since, I was feeling sick.  The kids, Travis, and I all worked on cooking everything and getting everything ready.  We had 3 other families over for dinner, and had a total of 8 adults and 17 kids for dinner.  All of the food was really good, and it was nice having friends over, it was especially nice when all of the kids went off to play, and the adults got to sit at the table and talk.   Travis left and went shopping about 6pm at Wal-mart and shopped until about 10:30-11pm that night, with just one call from someone who needed a chaplain, that he had to go on post to take care of for about an hour.  Friday we all went to costco (blindfolded the kids, because we got a couple of christmas presents)and got a fresh Christmas Tree (cut from Oregon!)  We came home and got out all of the Christmas decorations and spent the weekend decorating.  The kids loved getting out all of the Christmas stuff.  We also went out on Saturday and shopped for the 12 days of Christmas family we are doing this year.  We are starting it tonight, and doing it for the first 12 days of December.  Sunday our whole family was giving talks in Sacrament meeting.  Last Sunday the bishop asked us to all speak again.  We just all spoke a couple months ago, and it was a bit of a disaster so I thought we wouldn't be asked to speak again.  We spend some of Saturday and Sunday morning preparing for our talks.  We decided that this time we wouldn't sit up on the stand, so we sat on the front row in the chapel so we would be close enough to walk up to the microphone quickly, but not up on the stand.  Things went so much better this time.  I helped Caleb bear his testimony, and then Samuel, Betsy, and Austin each bore their testimonies, and then Joseph gave a short talk, I gave mine, Travis and I sung "A Child's Prayer", then last but not least, Travis spoke.  I also played the organ in church today, so it was a very busy sacrament meeting.  We started our Secret Santa project.  We all put our names on a piece of paper into a stocking, and each drew one out of the stocking.  We have to do secret acts of kindness for the person whose name we drew out of the stocking for the the week.  When we complete an act of kindness we put a piece of straw in our basket by the fireplace, and we are trying to fill it up with straw before Christmas, for baby Jesus.  We will switch names every week.  The rest of the day, Travis had to spend getting ready for going out into the field again.  He left this morning (at 3am) and should be back friday night.  Also the little girl I watch in the mornings is back again from Utah, so I am watching her in the mornings at 5am again.  I am very Thankful for my family, friends, and the church.