One Thanksgiving, One Location

For the past five years Thanksgiving has been a bit of a headache (in addition to the expected stomachache!) and a logistical nightmare. Usually Ryan and I are trying to hit two (sometimes three) family Thanksgiving dinners. When we got married we came up with an awesome plan that we would switch off where we spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in order to be fair. So the first year we had Thanksgiving with Ryan's family and Christmas with my family, and then the next year it was Thanksgiving with my family and Christmas with his, etc. Now this would be all fine and dandy and simple except that our parents live less than five minutes away from each other. So there is really no excuse not to see both families on holidays. The result is an hour by hour breakdown where Ryan and I travel back and forth between the two homes (we waste more gas on holidays than any other day). And we always visit my Oma and Opa who also live close by. So depending on where my parents are at for Thanksgiving (usually at Oma and Opa's) we have at least two dinners to catch (or consume).

But this year we got a rest—we spent an entire day at ONE HOUSE! A bunch of my mom's family came to Utah for Thanksgiving so we spent the holiday with my family. It's been about 13 years since I have spent Thanksgiving with some of my mom's family. It was so much fun to see my Grandma and Grandpa W., Aunt Robbie and her family, and Uncle Brian and his family. And since I forgot to bring my camera so you will have to imagine lots of yummy food, beautiful table decorations, lots of laughter and more than a few "inappropriate jokes and/or comments" (my Uncle Brian and I should be separated at all serious family functions!). Or you can just look at the Norman Rockwell painting above. It looks exactly like our Thanksgiving dinner this year except my mom and dad are about thirty years younger, no one wore suits, my parents' dining room is a different color, the food was served buffet style, no fruit bowls were in sight, and I'm pretty sure none of my uncles made eye contact with a painter.

Happy Turkey Day!

My aunt Robbie sent me this photo and I couldn't resist using it!

I thought I would share a few quotes on Thanksgiving.

"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land." —Jon Stewart

"Thanksgiving is America's national chow-down feast, the one occasion each year when gluttony becomes a patriotic duty (in France, by contrast, there are three such days: Hier, Aujourd'hui and Demain)." —Michael Dresser

Thanksgiving is my second favorite holidy (Christmas is first ofcourse!). Unfortunately, I need an annual holiday to remind myself of all my blessings. For me Thanksgiving is a time to be with family and to express gratitude. It's also a time to rededicate myself in matching my actions to my feelings of gratitude. I love the following quote by President John F. Kennedy:

"As we express our gratitude, we must never foreget that the highest
expectation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

I think Thanksgiving is a perfect start to the holiday season; it sets the tone as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ during the month of December. That's why I'm so bothered by the way Halloween and Christmas are squeezing out Thanksgiving. I love the Christmas season but I don't want it's ever earlier celebrations to demote Thanksgiving to simply a day off dedicated to food and football. Andy Rooney from 60 Minutes may be a crazy old coot but I thought he did a great job decrying the passing over of Thanksgiving.

All right, go eat your turkey and pumpkin pie.

The Killers

The Killers new album "Day & Age" was released today! So between listening that and fighting with a toddler who refuses to eat and sleep (the exact opposite of an infant) I'm busy. So instead of wasting your time reading my ramblings you can watch one of their music videos and check out their website.

Hair Pressure

Peter pre-haircut

I must be a weak person—I've finally succumbed to all the peer pressure regarding Peter's hair. I loved his crazy curly hair. I thought it made him unique in a family full of straight hair and it definitely added to his boisterous persona (because running around and screaming isn't enough). Unfortunately, there is a group of dissenters out there that do not appreciate Peter's luscious locks (jealous, perhaps?!). It's too long, he looks like a girl, it's scruffy, he looks like a baby, he has a mullet, blah blah blah blah blah.

I finally got tired of hearing those well-meaning (but wrong) pleadings. So on Friday I decided to make Ryan and the others happy (but mainly Ryan because I just love him so much!) and took Peter to get his second haircut. I was more than a little worried because his first haircut this past April produced many tears. But this time around Peter was a trooper. He stayed still and didn't cry a single time. Generally, he didn't look happy (and why should he, he was having his awesome hair cut off!) but he did crack a smile at the end. The lady who cut his hair layered it to emphasize the natural waves and curl in Peter's hair (I think that means Peter is a metrosexual). I like his compromise haircut; his hair still has some length and curl, but it is off his neck, out of his eyes, and clean-cut around the ears. Peter was happy because he got to play for 15 minutes on the store's slide when his haircut was done.

I think Peter enjoyed his first haircut in April, don't you?

A much happier, quieter and calmer second haircut

Playing on the slide

I Learned My Lesson

I must be a slow learner because I am continually surprised at how quickly such a little guy like Peter can make a massive mess. Yesterday I left him in his booster seat for two minutes while I ran downstairs to move a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. We had just finished lunch (yes, Peter was still wearing his pj's at lunchtime) and Peter only had a partial graham cracker and half a sippy cup of milk left. What could he possibly do in a few minutes while I was out of the room? Hearing Peter's gleeful giggling coming from the kitchen made me realize that probably a lot could happen! Clearly waving around an upside-down sippy cup is just so much fun (I'm thinking of trying it out during Thanksgiving dinner)!

Because Peter is still struggling (or is it me struggling) to get more than an ounce at a time from a sippy cup, I've been taking the valve out to make it easier for him to suck; dumb, dumb, dumb. Valve-less sippy cup + no supervision = very messy kitchen (and a very wet but happy Peter). And since I am such a tyrant of a mother I put the valve back in. As you can see from the picture below Peter was a bit perturbed with me (I don't know why, it's not like he had to clean up everything).

What a Cannibal!

Earlier this week I decided to stop being a shrew about Greek food (but just for one day) and went to a Greek restaurant with Ryan; he had been craving a gyro for a while. So I agreed to go along with the understanding that I could call gyros, "jai-rohs" all night without recieving an extensive Greek language lesson. Apparently in Greece gyro is pronounced "yee-roh" (last time I checked we're not in Greece so why pronounce it that stupid way). So there we were having a happy family dinner when Ryan decided to feed Peter some of his gyro and he (Peter) liked it way more than my chicken souvlaki! What's the problem with that you ask? Ryan's gyro was LAMB! Again, you ask what's the problem? Peter is supposed to feed sheep, not eat them! Don't worry, I'll explain.

For those who don't know, Peter's full name is Peter Churchill [Surname]. He is named after two of my heros: the Apostle Peter and Winston Churchill. Peter has always been my favorite figure from the scriptures because he always seemed so human and passionate (I can relate to him). I envy his relationship with and testimony of the Lord. I really couldn't think of a better person to name my son after, and luckily (for him) Ryan agreed. And of course Peter fit all of my name requirements (it would be an understatement to say I am obsessed with names--I waste way too much time on my theories and rules about naming).

And there was an extra bonus that came along with the name Peter: sheep. In the often quoted scripture St. John 21:15-17, Jesus Christ asks Peter if he loves Him. Peter affirms that he does. Jesus then tells Peter to "feed my sheep." Through his name, our Peter would have a constant reminder of the importance of missionary work. That combined with my fondness for sheep (I think I took more pictures of sheep while in Ireland than anything else!) I chose a sheep theme for Peter's nursery. I thought it was particularly appropriate for him considering his namesake. So for almost 2 years Peter has been slumbering surrounded by numerous sheep on his bedding and multiple plush sheep on his shelves. So I find it more than a little disturbing than Peter not only ate lamb but that he liked it so much.

Peter's quilt

Peter sleeping surrounded by sheep

I ♥ Family

Oma & Opa with all five of their great-grandchildren. At least a few of them smiled!

So I'm going to milk this past weekend for another blog post (it was a big weekend)! Definitely one of the best parts of having the surprise party was having so many family members there. It was wonderful to catch up with people that I hadn't seen in a long time. For the last 10 years many of my out of state cousins have come to Utah to attend college; Sunday dinners at Oma and Opa's became very crowded and fun. Unfortunately, a lot of them have moved away to various distant locations (my cousin Krista is in Dominica!). And now it seems like all my younger cousins are going to Idaho for college. So it was great to have such a large family gathering.

My cousin Quinten, his wife Kate, and their 3 children decided to drive up from Arizona at the last minute. I was really excited when I found out they were coming. I haven't seen them in over 3 years and I had never met their youngest child Paige. I had fun catching up with Kate and Peter had fun running around with his second cousins.

Peter with his second cousins: Paige, Rhaegan, Sam & Tyson

Peter had a lot of fun playing with Paige and "showing off" for her. Isn't Paige adorable!

55 Years!

My grandparents (Oma and Opa) had their 55th wedding anniversary on October 23rd. No one in the family made a big deal about it because we are all too self absorbed and busy...no, actually we had a surprise party planned for them this past weekend. My dad and his four siblings thought that 55 years of marriage is something worth celebrating (that and they did nothing for their parents' 50th!). So family came from all across the country (Washington, Idaho, Arizona, California, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) and hid out until Saturday afternoon. Through lies and deception (the foundation of every good surprise) my dad brought Oma and Opa to the church where we were waiting. I really think it meant it a lot to them to have their children and grandchildren gather together to celebrate them and their marriage. All five of their children were there and 12 of their 18 grandchildren came along with all 5 of their great-grandchildren (not that my grandparents look old enough to have great-grandchildren. I love you Oma!).

I also think my grandparents liked having a large family meal where they didn't have to cook (both are amazing cooks)! My mom and aunts had prepared mounds (I'm not kidding) of yummy food and my cousin Kayla and her husband Kent helped things stay interesting and fun with several games. My mom and I (translation: my mom) were responsible for the decorations. My mom came up with some awesome ideas (like usual) and asked me to figure out a way to display Oma and Opa's wedding pictures. I cleaned them up in Photoshop and added a background and did other miscellaneous things to them which no one but me would ever care about. (As you read in the previous post, I did this all twice thanks to my computer crashing. I didn't get my computer back until after the party so I had to redo everything on my parents' computer.) I put them all on a CD and had them printed at Alphagraphics on nice thick and glossy 11x14 paper. I think they turned out great (my grandpa wanted all of them).

One of my favorite photos from Oma and Opa's wedding

Anyway I think Saturday was a success. I think we all made my grandparents really happy--both cried (Opa said he just had something in his eyes!). Marriage isn't always easy and so seeing my grandparents still in love after 55 years was awesome. They are definitely an inspiration.

Stupid Computer, Stupid Me

I learned an incredibly valuable lesson this week: back up all important (and non-important) files on the computer. So Wednesday night our computer crashed; I was the unlucky recipient of the "Blue screen of Death" (is that supposed to be some kind of sick joke designed to make people go into shock). After trying for an hour to get my computer to boot I was able to determine that it was the hard drive (and then I did what every mature adult does, I cried and cried).

Of course this all happened as I was finishing up an extensive Photoshop project for my Grandparents' surprise 55th wedding anniversary party (that's 10 hours of my life I'll never get back). And then I had the sickening realization that I am dork (yes, I should have figured that out years ago). I hadn't backed up anything on my computer for over a year. Bye bye over 1,000 pictures of Peter, financial and tax records, 50 GB of music on iTunes, and my perfectly edited "favorites" list on Internet Explorer! I could handle losing everything except for the photographs (I don't think Peter would enjoy being squished into 3 month sized clothing to recreate photos).

Well, Thursday morning I dropped off the computer at a local computer data recovery shop where I begged the owner to save my photos. To be honest I didn't have much hope that anything could be saved from the hard drive, but the shop owner reassured me that he was 90% confident that he could recover all or most of our data. And since the guy was wearing a comic book t-shirt, a ratty hoodie, wrinkled pants, and had unkempt hair and the pale skin of someone who spends most of his time indoors behind a computer screen, I completely trusted him. We got a call today from the guy that everything had been recovered and transferred to the new hard drive. Ryan is the one that picked up the computer (I think he was afraid I would actually kiss the guy because I was so happy). So now I am happily reloading programs. And I'm doing something I should have done numerous times before: I'm backing up everything!

E is One!

Happy Birthday E! You are adorable and so much fun. Peter's very lucky to have you as a friend (he likes showing off for you).

Congratulations President Obama!

Well, I'm listening to John McCain's concession speech right now. While I admire Sen. McCain (I voted for him in the primaries of 2000), I'm very happy with today's results.

Election Day

Tomorrow is a big day (and it's not because Lindsay Lohan is releasing a new album, gag!). Go Obama!

My Little Puppy

So Ryan and I decided to take Peter on a practice run of trick-or-treating (because it is just so hard asking for free candy!) on Thursday night. We dressed him up in his costume (as an adorable and smell-free puppy) and took him to see his grandparents. Our first stop was Oma's (my Grandma P). She gave Peter a cute book and an adorable little bear dressed in a pumpkin costume that giggles and says, "Happy Halloween". While it definitely has not replaced Big Walter, Peter keeps nuzzling it. I'm hoping his first words aren't "Happy Halloween."Next we went to see Ryan's parents (Grandma & Grandpa T). Five of Peter's cousins were there meaning he recieved plenty of attention. We then wrapped up the night by visting my parents (Grandma & Grandap P) and my brother Kyle and his wife Renae. Unfortunately, Peter arrived in his pajamas with his costume in a grocery bag (he decided to pick fights with a bottle of milk and a sippy cup of apple juice—obviously he lost).

On Halloween I took Peter trick-or-treating . Peter was very confused at the first house when they tried giving him candy, but by the third house he became a fan of getting things from people. We ended up going to about 15 houses; Peter just kept walking and pulling me to down the street (more candy for me!). Once we got home he promptly dumped his loot out and organized it. He really didn't understand that it was candy but thought that people had given him lots of small colorful toys. First he sorted the candy on our living room coffee table then moved them up to my room. He laid the candy out in a line on Ryan's side of the bed and left (fortunately for Ryan and me, Peter has not remembered his candy).

Oh, I had to include a picture of Peter on Halloween 2007. What a cute farmer!