Thanksgiving 2011

This year for Thanksgiving, we headed down to Richfield to spend the holiday with the Rowley family. I was somewhat bummed that Richfield had their turkey trot at the beginning of November, because I had been looking for another race to do. So, I decided to create my own race, which was lovingly titled the "2011 Gobble Gobble Trot Trot." I roped a few friends into running this 5K with me, and I would like to thank them for being good sports to appease me. :) Darrell ran with me, as did Kacey, Christie, and Karen. Steve and Todd were excellent to wait at my parents at be our time keepers. We all scored these magnificent certificates and candy bars, while Kacey nabbed herself the grand prize of the Turkey Centerpiece :)

To appease my sobbing and wailing child who didn't get to run the 5K with us in the morning, we did a cousin race later in the afternoon. Here are most of the kids running down the street. What you can't see is Steven who biffed it hard on the asphalt and did a number on his knees.

So to once again appease my wailing and sobbing 4-year old, we had another cousin race in the back yard. This time it was much more successful for my cute little man :)

Tait, Jacob, Steven, Jay, Hayley and Abby (a.k.a. Rapunzel)

Buddies: Jay, Tait, Steven and Hannah after the race

And of course after a scrumptious feast, we took time out for some family photos....

I got this magnificent turkey craft idea a few years ago from a friend at a neighborhood play group in Lehi. I brought stuff for the kids, and we all had fun making turkey apples.u

Thursday night entailed the boys going to play basketball before a lot of us headed to Walmart at 10 p.m. for some madness, but at least we made up for it by sleeping in on Friday. :)

We took a bunch of the kids out shooting. Steven got to shoot a pistol and a rifle. It was fun to see his reaction to things for sure. :)

Saturday I didn't take any pictures. We headed to Darrell's parents house with the intent to go to the temple while they watched the kids. But due to Lillie deciding she needed to get super icky sick, I spent a lot of the day cuddling with her, and Darrell enjoyed playing games with his siblings :) Hopefully she'll be the only one to get sick.

Overall it was a good holiday and I'm so grateful for all of the blessings in my life! Good family, places for the family to play, and delicious food!

Things I've missed posting about....

Painting fun (We do that a lot....)

Ice Cream Treats

Freezing while watching BYU Football

My very cute (and it works amazingly too!) new headband headwarmer, made by my good friend, Genesis

Haircuts all around (And yes, I only took pictures of the ladies :))

And I'm only a month late posting my cute kids in their Halloween costumes :)

So many things!

Recently our laptop gave up the ghost. We knew it was getting close, but when our kids decided to use it as a jump board one day while I was in the shower it really gave up the ghost. Luckily, we had gotten everything off that we wanted, so now we just sit and wait for the right deal to come along. My sister is fantastic, and has let us take her old laptop on loan until we get a new one, but that has made it hard for me to post all the fabulous pictures that I would just love to be blogging!

As for us, in the past month and a half:

- We had a delightful Halloween

- Darrell switched positions at work - back to underwriting and funding. Glorious day!

- Steven has been excelling in joy school, and is starting to pick up fundamentals of reading

- Lillie's vocabulary is starting to explode, and she is starting to communicate phrases. I love this time of life. It's great how even the most simple words sound so cute from her. We found an old video of Steven saying a bunch of words at about 2 years old, and her voice and words sound so similar to his! He thinks those videos are absolutely hilarious. I really hope to get her on camera one of these days saying "applesauce" ""Awesome!" Hey Baby!" "Sparkle Toes" "What's up" Or "There it is!" Just so I can remember how cute it was.

- I impulsively cut 12 inches of my hair off to donate! I was in need of a new change, and it really seemed to be just what I needed!

- Enjoyed many trips to Thanksgiving Point

- Froze through a BYU vs. Idaho football game, but it was worth it for Steven and Lillie to have a half sleep over at Aunt Sheri's :)

Things I'm looking forward to!

-Holiday Boutiques

-Thanksgiving

-Meeting my dear friend's sweet new baby who is due in 3 and a half weeks

-Christmas Season

-Going to the Nutcracker

-Lots of Hot Chocolate

As for my thoughts tonight, I have had so many thought swirling in my mind about so many different things that I sometimes have felt overwhelmed. On top of that, Satan has been really mean lately and has made me feel like I'm not very good and that I don't fit in anywhere. He keeps trying to get me to compare myself to all the other amazing ladies around me so that I am not happy. Ug. Talk about frustrating. Friday night after pounding away at the piano for a half hour, I felt a little better and I got some of the motivation I needed to get out of this rut.

Today I was reading in the November Ensign preparing to go visiting teaching, and I was reading "The Privilege of Prayer" by Elder J. Devn Cornish of the Quorum of the Seventy. His talk really was what I needed to read tonight. The quote that really just hit me, and made me just burst into tears the moment I read it was this:

"In His mercy, the God of heaven, the Creator and Ruler of all things everywhere, had heard a prayer about a very minor thing. One might well ask why He would concern Himself with something so small. I am led to believe that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that the things that are important to us become important to Him, just because He loves us. How much more would He want to help us with the big things that we ask, which are right (see 3 Nephi 18:20)?

Little children, young people, and adults alike, please believe how very much your loving Heavenly Father wants to bless you. But because He will not infringe upon our agency, we must ask for His help. This is generally done through prayer. Prayer is one of the most precious gifts of God to man."

The biggest part of this that stuck out to me was the though "Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that the things that are important to us become important to Him, just because He loves us!(Emphasis added)"

Heavenly Father doesn't care if our cares are small, large, weird, crazy, or even dumb. He cares that we want to tell him about it because He loves us! He WANTS us to tell Him about us, so that we can feel His love. Feel His understanding. Feel that we are important. That's one thing I realized I really feel the Brethren wanted us to know this Conference. Heavenly Father loves us so much that He wants us to gain a better relationship with Him.

So, to cap off my ramblings, I got my answer. The thing I need to do to settle my being overwhelmed and my feelings of lack of self-worth is to improve my relationship with Him. And I sure hope that I can do that!