Thanksgiving

The following Monday we did our Thanksgiving dinner with Ben's mom and all of his siblings. It makes it a lot nicer not to have to worry about visiting everyone on the same holiday, ex specially one where you eat a lot all day long. Everyone was able to come this year which was really nice considering we all have very busy schedules and live in different areas ranging from North Ogden to Taylorsville. We don't get together very often, so when we do all get together, its that much better. Even better we just relaxed and visited, after dinner of course. We also took some family pictures. One of the gifts the entire family was giving to Ben's grandma for Christmas/birthday was a digital frame and each child was to take pictures to have put on memory card for the frame. Annie had their Christmas tree up already and it made for a really cute background.

Decorations

I love decorating for Christmas and as a tradition, we decorate the Friday after Thanksgiving. Everyone else goes shopping, we decorate. This year we put our tree downstairs and it worked out really nice. The kids did pretty good not touching it either. We only had to tell them once.

Thanksgiving Day

Its been so long, its hard to remember all that happened during the Holidays. For Thanksgiving, we had Thanksgiving lunch at mom and dad's this year. Grandma Shupe was able to come down from Orem, its always good to have her come and spend the holiday's with us. Mom asked us each to contribute to the lunch. Ben loves his recipe for rolls, so he quickly volunteered for them and potatoes. I also helped mom two days before Thanksgiving to make all the pies. I think that's one of my favorites things to do with mom. We made a lot of very yummy pies. I could do the whole lunch of just the pies. On Thanksgiving mom had things all set up very nice, with a really pretty table setting and all the fixings. She always goes above and beyond. The whole meal was very good, even the kids loved it. I was so impressed with my kids. I'm not a fan of sweet potatoes, but my kids ate them alive. It was the first thing gone from both of their plates, ex specially Owen's. Once dinner was over, we all helped clean things up and then we just visited. It was nice to just sit and visit with Grandma. We also played a game or two before we headed out to go to Ben's dads.

Its a tradition to go out to Garland and spend the evening with Nelson and Deann. We general do desserts. I will make something and Deann will make something and we wait to see who shows up. This year Cody was able to come up that whole weekend, it was really nice to see him and get to visit with him. We don't see him very often. This year besides Cody, we were the only ones who came up. It was nice to visit one on one, but it would have been nicer to have everyone there. Deann always cooks a turkey just case we are hungry for more then just desserts and like usual, we all ate the turkey and the desserts, so much that we were all dieing at the end of the night because we had eaten too much. This year Deann had gotten a special treat for the kids, a sucker that had some kind of Thanksgiving picture. We made Gabbi wait to eat hers because she literally stuffed her face. It was crazy how much she ate that night. We gave Owen his. He had never had a sucker before and it was hilarious to watch him. For one, that sucker was almost bigger then he was, it seemed. Two he had a hard time holding it, so he dropped it a lot onto his tray. Third, the best part, he loved that sucker so much that he had a cow when he dropped in on the floor and it broke into tons of little pieces. He cried for a good 5 minutes when he realized it wasn't coming back. It was so funny. The only bad part about the sucker was cleaning him up. We ended up just giving him a bath, that's how sticky he was. It was great. Once it starting getting late, we decided it was time to head home. Got the kids in the jammies, in hopes that they would fall asleep on the ride home, then we headed for home. It was a really fun day.

Cutest thing

We were over at Jeff and Tiffany's one night and Gabbi had seen Kayla going through a magazine and writing down things that she wanted for Christmas. I didn't realize how much Gabbi was actually paying attention to her. Two days later we had received a toy magazine in the mail. Gabbi has a possession problem. She thinks that everything that comes to the house is hers, so when she saw this magazine it was no different. She started going through it and telling Ben and I all the things she wanted to play with. We thought nothing of it, thought that is was actually kind of cute, til it got out of hand. She saw a picture of a girl her age playing with a kitchen set. For some reason she had it in her head that this girl was real and was a friend that lived just down the street. She went on a kick of wanting to go and play at this girls house and with her toys. We tried to tell her that she wasn't real, she was just a picture and that we didn't know who she was. She then tried to explain to us that she lived down the street and that she could go and play with her. She quickly ran into her room and put her shoes on so she could go and play. We then tried a different angle. We told her that we didn't know who the little girl was and we didn't know her parents so she couldn't go over there. She continued to try her hardest to tell us that we did know her parents and that she just lived down the street. We tried over and over to tell her no, that a play date wasn't happening. But she wouldn't have it. So we decided to drop it and let it go. Ben was ready to head out to run an errand so we thought that is might make the thought leave her mind is she went with Ben. She was very excited to go and we thought we were in the clear. She had fallen asleep when they were on their way back. The first thing she said when she woke up after Ben had brought her in the house was "where's my friend?" She instantly started to cry and was so upset that she wasn't at her friends house to play. So much for thinking that it was over with just a simple errand.

5 year Anniversary

Ben and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary on November the 18th. I can't believe that we have been married for 5 years. It has been a very fast 5 year. But it truly has been a wonderful adventure. Ben and I have known each other for 14 years, since the 8th grade. We have experienced many things together before and after our wedding. We have had our ups and downs just like everyone else, but it has been an amazing ride.

This year for our anniversary we decided to go up to Park City. As a service member of the Iraqi war, a Resort up in Park City was offering free nights, so we decided to take advantage of it. We made our arrangements for a condo Thursday night. Ben had to work that day, so we could leave until he got off work. Once he got home and cleaned up, we packed the car and headed to drop off the kids at my mom and dad's. The kids were excited to play with Nana and Papa, or at least Gabbi was. I'm sure Owen would say the same if he could talk. Once the kids were taken care off, we headed for fun. The drive up to Park City was nice. The canyon's looked very pretty with a small blanket of snow. I told Ben that they looked liked the trees were topped by powder sugar. It was funny, but that's what it looked like. It was dark by the time we got up there, but we finally found the place where we were to check in. The were closed but left our condo key in the lock box. Once we got our key, we went to try and find the condo. We had the map provided by the company, but that didn't help much. It was dark and we had a hard time finding the exact one. Once we had, we took our stuff up to the bedroom and headed for dinner. We decided to go to eat at Ruby Tuesday. Ben had never been there before and I had been there once. It was little more expensive then I thought it was going to be or even planned, but it was still good. They redeemed themselves. The last time that I ate there, it was horrible service and the food wasn't any better. It was nice to sit down just Ben and I and talk about normal adult things without having to worry about the kids. Once we were done eating we went to get some ice cream and went back to the Condo. We enjoyed the rest of our evening watching the Mentalist by the fireplace. It was hard to sleep that night because it was so windy. You could hear the wind blow against signs, trees, etc. It was so noisy. I had to turn the T.V. on to try and drown out the sound. That didn't even help much. Ben can sleep through anything and can sleep anywhere. I cannot, I don't think I got more then 4 hours of sleep that night. Thanks Heavens for reruns of the shows I used to watch in high school (family matters, save by the bell, golder girls.) I couldn't lay there anymore so I got up and got ready for the day. Ben finally woke up and got ready as well. Once we were ready for the day, we packed up our bag, straighten up the condo and headed to go find a place to eat breakfast. We found a nice little pancake house that had a breakfast buffet. It was really good. For an unknown place, it was really good. When we were done eating breakfast, we headed up to the Olympic Park Museum. We had looked up places and things to do while in Park City and we decided to go to the museum. Ben and I like museums and this one looked pretty cool. We were a part of it while in high school. Our choir sang for the USA team as they entered the Olympic park in Salt Lake. I was able to go to one of the events in Park City. So the museum brought back wonderful memories as well. The museum was put together very well. They had a lot of items form the actually games and Opening ceremony and then the remainder of the museum shared the history of the greatest snow on earth and how it came to be. It was a fun little museum. It even had interactive exhibits that Ben got a kick out of. When we were finished walking through the museum we were able to go outside and look at some of the training facilities for the athletes. It amazing everything those athletes go through. It was great museum. When we were done at the museum we decided to see what was playing at the local theater. Luckily we were in time to see the movie, Jack and Jill with Adam Sandler. We had seen a few previews of the show, and it looked funny from what we remembered. Anything with Adam Sandler seems to be a good bet, and it was. Ben and I laughed our head off and the best thing, we were the only ones in the theater. It was a Friday at 11. So we were really surprised that we were the only ones. But it was a really funny show. Adam Sandler did a great job pulling off playing a set of twins, boy and girl. It was hilarious. One we will buy when it comes on DVD. When the movie was over we headed back to Ogden. We had tickets to go and see Breaking Dawn Part 1 around 3. So on our way back into town, we stopped in Riverdale to do some Christmas shopping for the kids. We found some fun stuff for the kids and then headed for the show. We got there in time to get some popcorn and drinks and then go to find our seats. It was in the biggest theater in the Junction and it was packed. I don't think there was an empty seat. We both loved the movie. It was nicely put together and they didn't do to bad following the books. That bugs me sometimes when the movies don't follow the books. It was a great movie and now the only bad part is having to wait another year before Part 2 will be released. When our movie was over we went for a quick dinner at Arby's. We had eaten at big restaurants the whole time and decided to do something a little cheaper. While we were there the power went out. It was crazy. So we ate in the dark. When we were done we went to get the kids and then headed home. Once we put the kids down for bed, we relaxed and finished the night with a movie we rented from Redbox. It was a very fun movie packed anniversary weekend. It was great, we both love movies.

Disney on Ice

Ben and I decided to take Gabbi to the Disney on Ice show being held at the ESA a couple of weeks ago. We had tried to get tickets to go to the show last year, but weren't able to. We were disappointed, but had decided that if the show came to town again we try to get some tickets. We were so glad that the show came back into town because we knew that Gabbi would love the show. My sister was able to get us a promo code that we could use when purchasing our tickets to save a little money. We had saved up some money and were happy to use it on the tickets. We didn't get the V.I.P tickets, but we got the next best thing. The first row right behind the V.I.P. row. They looked liked great seats and we couldn't wait to go. We planned for a sitter for Owen and then counted down the days til the show. We went to the show Nov. 10th. That morning the Disney on Ice was featured on Fox news and I had Gabbi watch it with me. She thought it looked pretty cool. She went the whole morning talking about going to see the Princesses. The day seemed to go by very slow. When it finally came time to go, we dropped Owen off at my mom's and headed to Salt Lake. When we got there, we went out to eat at the Rumbi Grill. We had never eaten there before and thought it sounded pretty Good. It was very good. When we were done eating we headed down to the Gateway to park and we realized that we still had time to waste. We went to the Clark Planetarium to look around at their exhibits. Gabbi loved the hands on exhibits. When the time came we headed over to the ESA to find our seats. The seats were even better then we had hoped. As you can tell from the picture we were pretty much the first row. They had the V.I.P. row on the floor and then we were the next row. It was awesome. I think Ben and I were just as excited as Gabbi was. The best part of the whole show was seeing the look on Gabbi Face when the show started.

First expression when the character first took to the ice

Warm ups with the Incredible Family

The hosts of Disney Treasure Trove: Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, and Donald

Alice in Wonderland

Twiddle Dee, Twiddle Dumb, Mad Hater, White Rabbit, and Alice tell their story of their encounter with the wicked Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts with her minions, a deck of cards. I loved the deck of card costumes. One side of their costume was suite and the other was another suite. They were some awesome costumes. They even had two faces and two pair of shoes.

Peter Pan

Wendy, Micheal, John, Peter, and the lost boys share the scary stories of Captain Hook and the famous crocodile.

Captain Hook and his first mate, Schmee

The famous ticking Crocodile

Captain Hook and his pirates rustling up the lost boys

Lion King

Rafikee singing on the top of Pride Rock, celebrating the birth of a new lion cub, Simba

The wildebeest stampede. This was just amazing to see. The costumes made it really look like there were hundreds of wildebeest. Very nicely put together

Young Simba with Timon and Pumba learning about life with no worries

Grown up Simba reuniting with grown up Nala

The Kingdom celebrating the return of the rightful King, Simba

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

The seven Dwarfs: Happy, Doc, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Grumpy, and Dopey

The Dwarfs mourning the loss of their Snow White, but close beside them is the Price coming to rescue her

Snow White with her prince

Aladdin

Aladdin with the Genie

A parade held in the honor of Aladdin after receiving his first wish to become a prince in order to impress Princess Jasmin

She wasn't very impressed with all his stuff. She's watching from the castle, unimpressed

He finally won her over on the breathtaking ride on his magic carpet

Aladdin and Jasmin

The Little Mermaid

Sebastian trying to convince the life under the Sea is much better the life on the land

Ariel listening to Sebastian, but not really believing him. She wants to follow her dream of being on land

Tangled

Rapunzel forcing Flynn to take her to see the floating lanterns or he can't get his precious crown back

Flynn surprising Rapunzel with her own lantern to release into the sky to celebrate the lost Princess, which just so happens to be her

Rapunzel and Flynn

Minnie and Mickey introducing the last story, The Princess and the Frog

The Princess and the Frog

Tiana with her Prince, Prince Naveen

Grand finale

All the Princesses and Princes came out to do their last finale dance. The Finale also featured Belle and the Beast, Cinderella and Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip, Mulan and Li; who's stories were not shared during the show

What a great evening