~Happy Thanksgiving~

This year we had Thanksgiving with the Ropelatos.  Jeff and Becky hosted lunch at their place.  We had an enjoyable afternoon visiting, playing with cousins, meeting Jackie's boyfriend, and watching a movie marathon of Stranger Things.

We had to sneak out of our Stanger Things marathon to head to our traditional Thanksgiving Day family movie.  This year we saw Thor: Ragnarok.

Hunter is such a goof.  He loves to act goofy pictures to push my buttons, lol.

I am so grateful for these 4 cuties!

When we got home from a fun day with family, our elf, Fred, had returned bringing with him Christmas pjs, festive hats, and treats.

These 5 are my world!

Let the holiday festivities begin!  It's officially Christmastime.  My favorite time of the year!

~Rhino~

Lexi got the privilege of getting to bring her class pet Rhino home with her to take care of over the Thanksgiving break.  She was on cloud nine, and has been quite the good little care taker of the class hamster.  Dave and I have been very impressed.  She is good to make sure Rhino has plenty of food and water, plays with him all the time, and even put him to sleep by rubbing his back.

After having Rhino for a week, Lexi has decided that she now wants to ask Santa for a hamster for Christmas.  Dave and I have let her know that any presents from Santa have to be approved by us first, lol.  She has been begging me to let Santa know that a hamster would be ok.  Oh Boy! I love this girl.

~Sojourner Truth~

For Lexi's 3rd grade book report, she read a book about Sojourner Truth and made this cute puppet to present this heroine to her class.

~Young Womens Day in Excellence~

We decided to do something a little different this year for our Young Women's Evening in Excellence.  Instead of doing it at night and only invite the parents of our young women, we decided to do a sacrament meeting where the girls shared what they had worked on through the year in their personal progress and how it has brought them closer to their Heavenly Father.  We called it our Day of Excellence.  Then we had a linger longer after church, where the ward members were able to come and view what the girls had been working on, and of course we had refreshments.

This was Mckell's first time actually speaking in sacrament meeting.  She did such a great job.  I was so proud of her.

Some of the things Mckell has been working on this year is she made a quilt, she is learning to play I am a Child of God on the piano, she has been improving her dance skills, she found family names and took them to the temple, made modest shorts, etc.  She is such a beautiful girl, inside and out.

I love being in the Beehives with Mckell.  We have so much fun together!

The 24th ward Young women.

~Leaves~

Lexi and Garrett are the cutest!  We decided this year for Christmas we would have the kids draw names for each other.  Then they would each earn money to buy a gift for that sibling.  Lexi and Garrett have been so excited to do this, and have been begging for jobs to do to help them earn some money.  One of the jobs they could do was rake up and bag the leaves from the backyard.  It was awesome to see how excited they were to do this job.  We had fun raking the leaves and then playing in the leaves for a little while, lol.  I love how positive these two are about everything.  I wish that attitude could spread a little bit more on the rest of us, lol.

Lexi and Garrett worked hard gathering 12 big black garbage bags of leaves between the two of them.  What great workers!!!  They definitely earned their $20 for the Christmas gift exchange.

~The Gene Fullmer Super League~

Hunter, Calvin, Spencer, and Sammy have been working with a basketball trainer for some time now.  Hunter has even played with Troy in his E3 league down in Salt Lake.  Troy put together a new league, Utah Force, and asked these boys to play with him in his sophomore league (even though they are just 9th graders).  They had a lot of fun playing with this group of boys and won the championship in their division.  They played some pretty tough teams from all over the Salt Lake area.  Way to go boys!!!

Gene Fullmer Super League Sophmore Champs!  Hope we have another opportunity to play with this group of boys in the future.

I hope these boys know how lucky they are that Jerry has vested so much time and energy into them.  He's the one who lined Troy up to come work with them, made sure they got down to these Salt Lake games every week, and was their biggest cheerleader from the stands.  They wouldn't be the players they are today without Jerry. :)