Happy Birthday, Jordan - Happy Thanksgiving!

Jordan was lucky enough (or maybe not so lucky) to turn 19 right on Thanksgiving Day this year! Happy Belated Birthday! Here's a quick look back over the years at this handsome guy:

We had traveled to Grandma & Grandpa Danes' home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving Eve we went to the local Mexican restaurant where G&G Danes treated us to a birthday dinner for Jordan. Thanks so much Mom & Dad!

We went back to G&G's home and had dessert with Bill & Karen who had just arrived.

It just doesn't seem possible that another one of my babies is grown and ready to leave the nest! Jordan keeps a happy spark with frequent joking around our home, and we're going to miss him terribly when he leaves! I couldn't be a prouder mom, though! Love you, Bud!

Muffin had just delivered her puppies the day we arrived:

For Emily it was love at first sight with the little pups!

We spent Thanksgiving Day at my brother, Jim's, home. There were about 40 people there - lots of good food and company.

At this time of year, I truly have so many blessings to be thankful for. Good health, the freedoms of our country, the gospel, and family to name a few. As I grow older, "stuff" means so much less to me, and family means so much more. I know my mom & dad's time is growing short, and it was a treasure to spend time with them for several days.

Weekly Happenings

First I need to apologize - I'm having trouble getting paragraph breaks to work in this post. I don't know why everything is running together. It makes it harder to read, but I can't seem to fix it.

Tuesday: Friends, frosting, and fun.

Emily and her friend, Alicia, had been working on improving their reverence in Primary. Their reward was baking cookies together, so here they are:

The only kind of cookie cutters I have are Christmas, so it was Christmas a little early! :) They had a lot of fun though, and the next day Alicia and her sister Katie both wrote thank-you notes to Emily and me. Emily promptly wrote a note to them and ran it over to their house. It's really nice that Alicia just lives around the corner from us. She's been a good playmate for Emily.

Wednesday: Dave's parents, Mom & Dad Bascom, had us over for a birthday dinner for Dave, delicious pot roast, potatoes, carrots, and salad, with apple crisp and ice cream for dessert. After being sick for a week, it was so nice that I didn't have to cook that night! Thank you, Mom Bascom!! We had forgotten our camera, so Mom Bascom has the only pictures taken that night. Only downer was that I broke a new bottle of Lighthouse Blue Cheese dressing right before we walked out the door. Darn!

Thursday: I finally cleaned off the bar and mopped my kitchen floor after about 3 months. It was badly needed! I should have taken a picture of the before and after...............So nice to be able to walk on the floor without sticking to it!

Friday: Dave & I went out to Red Robin for lunch to redeem his free burger and fries. We both tried something new that came with his burger: garlic parmesan fries. YUM! If you've never tried them, you need to!

Saturday: Flag Football. Our stake got together with a Provo stake for a men's flag football tournament. It's being held right here in our park, so I went out to watch Jordan for awhile. Here he is on the run: (one in front with white shirt and dark blue shorts)

Jordan absolutely loves any kind of sport, and it really is fun watching him. Plus Emily played in the park with Chipper while we were out there; it was a beautiful fall morning!

With being gone to California, catching up after the trip, and getting sick, I hadn't gotten any of the fall yard cleanup done yet. So I decided Saturday would be the day to tackle it. I repaired our broken leaf rake and got some leaves raked up.

(notice the "not so white" white socks)

Emily's annual fun in the leaves - we missed Caitlin for this!

Dave came out and tried to help, but the rake broke again, and we were out of bags. The BYU football game was starting soon, so I knew that was it for yard work that day. We did get three bags filled though. During the game I went and bought a new rake and more bags. Guess what we're doing for an early family night tomorrow????

After the game Jordan went with friends, and Dave, Emily, and I headed to Salt Lake to do some shopping at Linens 'n Things. We had gifts cards to use up, since their store is closing. We bought new drinking glasses, and some needed kitchen utensils. Then we met Bill and Karen (my sister) for dinner at Gecko's Mexican Restaurant for Dave's birthday, where they treated us (thank you Bill & Karen!) It's so nice that they live close enough we can get together once in awhile!

Sunday: I came in the kitchen and here's what I saw:

Chef Emily. She had put on Dave's cooking apron and was ready to make him breakfast in bed.

Emily made the toast, and I made an eggs, sausage, hashbrowns skillet thing - I think the scouts call it rabbit guts, so it doesn't look like much, but it tasted good!

Later, after probably a decade, I tried my hand at making homemade lasagna. It turned out really well. While I was at Nicia's she showed me how to make lasagna without cooking the noodles. So slick! Anway, homemade lasagna and homemade garlic breadsticks, and Dave was in heaven with another family birthday dinner. (with more family who wasn't with us on Wed.) I think Emily took this shot of us at the table..........

Opening presents: I love this next picture, so sweet.

Emily, her Daddy, and the coupon book she made for him.

I have so much to be grateful for, but I'm especially thankful for my family. I'm so blessed to be able to share the joys in their lives.

Happy Birthday, Dave!

Today is my sweetie's birthday, so in honor of his special day, I thought I'd post a few pictures of his earlier days till now:

Love the smile, love the pose!

"Peace" (from our hippie party)

June 16, 2000, a very special day for us!

Peaceful dreams for a Daddy and his precious Emily

Happy Birthday, sweetheart! I love you!

California pictures......finally!

As I wrote about last week - we went to California to see Nicia & Joe over the school's fall break. The entire week was really a treasure for us. At 16 months, Alyssa was just so cute! Here she had put her pajama shorts on her head:

Time for prayer!

On one of our first days there, Dave had a meeting in Cambria, an hour north of Santa Maria. We all went with him and headed to a beautiful beach while Dave got to have fun giving his presentation. :) Nicia and Emily had a blast in the water, going in a little bit, then running away from the water as it came in. Nicia was such a great sister, getting in and actually playing with Emily. She loved it!

Emily finally got totally soaked:

Holding what she called her "cheese"

Dave came after his presentation and spent more time on the beach with us.

Here's a cute picture of Nicia & Joe that day:

Saturday we went to Avila Farm where they had all kinds of things for fall, pumpkins, petting zoo, hay maze, hay ride (we skipped since we'd already been on one), and yummy fudge.

We took lots of pictures here, but they all had shadows. Sorry!

I love Alyssa's face here....

Of course we had to go geocaching while we were there. There were some we never found, but there was one we had to kind of go on a little hike to get. We found it, and it even had a California geocoin in it, which apparently, is kind of rare!

While looking for one of the geocaches in a wooded area, we came across this really cool labyrinth, which if I remember right, was a replica of one in Europe. It was huge! We had a lot of fun finding our way to the middle - very cool.

Alyssa was the smart one - she just climbed over the rocks to get to the center

"Hey Grandma, what's taking you so long? Just climb over the rocks!"

Another day we got up early and went to a beach that was known for its sand dollars. We were only able to find a few small ones, but we had a great morning there, playing in the water and sand, and Dave was able to do a lot of metal detecting too:

Notice the car in the background of the picture above. This was a really cool beach - they let us drive right down on the sand, not far from the water's edge!

As I said in my previous post, we were able to see Dave's Dad and Marion on our way home. Emily had a great time playing with her Grandpa:

Here are some pictures of Aunt Emily and Alyssa. Emily was such a good aunt - she played with Alyssa a lot and was so cute looking after her:

Reading Alyssa's new book

Toot! Toot! Here we come!

Just hangin' out on the sand together - precious

Family: Life's Greatest Blessing