Granna's Birthday and the Temple Square Lights

This last Sunday, we celebrated Granna's 95th birthday! We got together with all the family that was in town.

The Scalleys made this cute birthday cake - purple is Granna's FAVORITE color!

Kate teaching Sam how to play the hand slapping game

Nora had a good chat with Grammy

 Getting a picture with the guest of honor! We love Granna!

Opening gifts

 Reece was telling jokes to the kids, and they loved it. Hehehe!

Since we were down town, and it was a warm night, we stopped by Temple Square after the party and saw the lights there. Mike thought it looked a little weird with no snow, but it was still beautiful.

Checking out the nativities from all over the world

They had luminarias with Christmas greetings in many different languages. This one is in braille.

The girls with Grammy (and a photobombing Sam)

Mom and Dad at the place where they got engaged

The large Nativity

The kids said they had never been in the visitor's center to see the Christus, so we took them in to see it. The kids also enjoyed seeing the flag pins on the missionaries and finding out where they were from.

Evie really wanted a picture by Eve. Hehe.

Christmas Card

This is our Christmas card for this year. We took the picture with the timer on the camera. I think it turned out pretty well, considering!

Decorating for Christmas and Meeting Santa!

On actual Thanksgiving, and for several days after, we set up the Christmas decorations at our house. 

We also made a trip to the mall to see Santa. It was the day that pets were also allowed to come get a picture with Santa, but we thought that might be a little overwhelming for Dorie and she would get over-excited. We did get to see and pet a cute black lab that was there visiting Santa, though! The kids were all very excited to see Santa and tell them what they want for Christmas.

Second Thanksgiving

On Black Friday, we had our family Thanksgiving with my side of the family. Karin, Ricky and the boys were there, and it was so much fun to have everyone together! Granna and Dianne were also able to join us, and we enjoyed getting to spend time with them. Mom and Dad made a special effort to have some awesome gluten free things for Kate and Evie, which we really appreciated!

Pretty table setting:

All the yummy Thanksgiving foods!

 

Time for pie! There was pumpkin, pecan and apple.

Grammy and the kids made this fun paper turkey with paper feathers left over from their ward Thanksgiving activity

Fun with cousins!

After dinner, we went to go see the new Disney movie, Big Hero 6, which is a movie about a boy, an inflatable robot, and their friends from the robotics program, who make themselves into high-tech super heroes to go after a mysterious bad guy.

My favorite part of the movie - "Hairy baby"

We saw the movie in 3D, so here we all are in our glasses

Without glasses

Back at Grammy and Grandpop's, the kids set up "James Town Factory", which had a restaurant of playfood, an ATM and Nora added an animal shelter of stuffed animals.

The finished paper turkey

 

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving, spent in good company. We have much to be grateful for!