Thanksgiving Trip

Because I am too lazy to put these in order and most of the pictures were from my phone, here are the happenings of our Arizona trip. In RANDOM order!!! I really need to get my camera out and take pictures but my phone is much handier but not as good as pictures.

After the first big snow storm at home Chelsea sent me a picture of all the snow on her porch so I sent her a picture of Grandma's porch. Ahh....no snow to shovel.Because we are far away from most retail stores we look forward to going to Wal-Mart when we go shopping and that is the only and closest place (30 miles) we go for our Black Friday shopping.

It is a joke but true story how we will thumb through the Wal-Mart ad as soon as we get it until the pages wilt. We will look and look and re look to see if there is anything different since we looked at it FIVE minutes ago.

Here is Claire studying the ad. She was so intense she even took off her glasses to look.

Before the ad came out and before Lisa got there, we looked at the ad online. It was a race to see who saw the ad first. Lisa said she got the link but I am not sure if she actually SAW the ad before we did!!
Finally Lisa gets there and this is the millionth time I think she has seen the ad. I had slipped in some other companies pages to make sure she saw something new. I was so disappointed when she just said, "What is this doing in here." Not quite the affect I was looking for. Psha! Claire at it again.
The coveted ad.
Instead of taking the car, for better mileage, we took the truck just in case we hit some stormy weather on the way back home AND it had more room to stretch and haul gifts. The cheaper fuel in the car would have been nice but the ROOM in the truck was GREAT!
On our way down to Arizona (half way there), we thought we were going to have truck problems. When we slowed for fuel we heard some kind of noise. Daddy inspected it and we fill up the tank and then filled up some other fluid and it seemed to quiet down a bit. We didn't notice anymore problems on the road. I guess we were just starving the poor thing.

At our "Gathering Place" Diana make some flower centerpieces.

Rebecca didn't want to feel left out so she made one too.

We got our fair share of Thanksgiving dinner.

It was Doran's birthday on the 24th and I gave him some cologne stink pretty. I can't find Pierre Cardin in very many stores and when I found this at a Walgreen's, well I had to snag it up! Look how big this bottle is. I better head back and get some more for a years supply. He hasn't had any for awhile and I MISSED it!!! Oh he stinks pretty now!!

And would you look what we found at a Safeway!! My favorite in cute little bottles! I should have got a bunch of this too...sigh. Do we have Safeway's in Utah anymore?

The day after Thanksgiving Claire makes this homemade chicken turkey noodle soup. My mom taught Doran how to make this years ago and then Doran taught Claire how to make it and OH it is SO good!! The fatter the noodles the better. Lisa, we are shopping WITHOUT you but making sure we don't have any fun.

This is the view on the way home. Gorgeous!

Oh and my first Chocolate pie. I called my mom and got a yummy recipe that has cream cheese in the bottom. When we got ready to serve it we put whipped cream on top. It was a hit and I didn't even get a bite.

This was on our way down. Doran always says, "Arizona has it's own beauty."

Me and Melissa

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

all around the house.

with the sons a messing around

or maybe the're hanging the lights...

la da de da de da de da de da...

We played a gift game and played games....

How many people does it take to figure out how to work a locater key chain?

We did have a skiff of snow and Jeremy made the first snowman of the year.

What a proud builder!

When the kids were puppies we would ride out to the Jackrabbit and take pictures. Because I am lousy about writing the years on picture there are many years we would figure out the ages by comparing how big the kids were each year.

Doran and I decided to get our picture done in the FREEZING wind on our way home. We had to do some finagling propping the camera on the hood of the truck.

We get to stay in our own hotel that Danny and Claire provides for us. One morning our water froze so daddy had to thaw it out. There were a couple more days we had different water issues but we stayed nice and toasty INSIDE.

This is grandma's gaggle of geese....er grandchildren. She is teaching them the Jack and Jill bird song.

Claire's grand kids would not hold still for a picture. Yes, there are twins there and they latched on to Doran the whole time we were there. Nope we couldn't tell them apart.

I taught Nathan how to make Pumpkin choc chip cookies. He is 14 and a great help!

This is Doran's birthday cake.

And this was the alternative for the little ones.

Several years ago Dorans mom made me some black and red plaid bows for our Christmas tree. This year I wanted to do a Peppermint color tree so she dug in her ribbon box and found this ribbon. She is concentrating so good. Thanks tons for the bows!

I can't remember what game they were playing but here is Claire acting out a Ballerina.

This is Alexandria aka Alex. She found a baby as big as her.

That is our trip. I kick myself for not being better about taking picture.

Doran, Kim, Danny, Nathan and Kevin all went out and found, chopped, and split wood and brought it back on Doran's birthday. No one had a camera then either.