Thanksgiving Report and Baby Blessing Pictures

Thanksgiving:

All of us had the whole week off, so Monday afternoon we drove down to Austin, and stayed with Clay and Andrea Holland, some friends from law school. They have a nice place with plenty of room for us. We played cards after the kids went to bed.

The next day we and the Hollands met up with Michael (Brittany’s new husband) at the Texas State History Museum. The museum is very well done, and great for both kids and adults. The highlight was the 15 minute “interactive” movie we watched on 3 screens surrounding the theater. There were flashes of lightning, wind and rain during the hurricane, and our seats rumbled with all the horses running and guns being fired. The best part came when they showed rattle snakes all over the screens, made the seats rumble with hissing, and then a lever in the seats sprung up and hit us on the backs of our legs just as the snakes struck. I jumped right out of my seat!

Afterwards we got Brittany from her lab and we all went out for Philly cheese stakes (I know, I know, in Texas). We spent the afternoon at Austin’s big city park, riding the kids train, digging around in the dinosaur pit, and looking at the animals at the nature center. We had dinner at Brittany’s apartment, but it was too small for us to stay there. We slept at the Hollands again that night, and stayed up late playing golf, bowling, and tennis on their Nintendo Wii.

Wednesday morning we went to the LBJ Library on the University of Texas campus (right next to the football stadium, capacity 97,000). Clay tagged along again, since he had never been and is studying Political Science at UT. The LBJ museum was well done, too, with a recreation of the Oval Office during his presidency, and a whole floor about the space program in the 60s. We had a picnic lunch at the Texas State capital, and then Clay showed around a little. He works for the state in a building across the street, in addition to his classes. After lunch we loaded up the car, met up with Brittany and Michael, and we all drove 5 ½ hours to Odessa.

Thursday morning Spencer and Donna got up early to put the turkey in, and then the whole family (Spencer & Donna, us, and Brittany& Michael—Sunny and Dan were in NY for Thanksgiving) played football at Kelsey’s Jr. High, and practiced kicking field goals. We had our turkey feast at 2 (everything turned out delicious), took some naps, went on a walk, had dessert around 6, and generally just “lazed” around. We played Pictionary that night—the girls beat the boys in a heated competition.

Friday morning we played Ultimate Frisbee with the Vores (from Kelsey’s ward) for two hours. My team won, but we were all sore the next day. We got tacos for lunch and then went to see a movie. Half of us saw James Bond, and the other half saw Madagascar. Everyone liked the movie they saw. That night we had leftovers and played cards, and, of course, we made a late-night corn dog run at about midnight. The corndogs were jalepeno flavored. I was feeling it the next morning.

Saturday was nice and slow. We did some shopping, made gingerbread houses with the kids, and went out for barbeque for dinner. We played games again that night. We kept a running tally of all the games we played over the week, and by Saturday night Kelsey, Brittany, Spencer, and I were all tied for first (I won’t mention Donna and Michael’s scores, I don’t want to embarrass them).

On Sunday we went to Kelsey’s ward, and I blessed Miles. Spencer and Michael stood in the circle, as well as the Stake President, Chris Vore, and Adam Bird. It was nice. We loaded up the car after sacrament meeting and drove 6 hours back to Plano. All in all it was a really fun week!