Thanksgiving

Jason's brother's family invited us to North Carolina for Thanksgiving. It was a fun little trip. We stopped in Charleston, West Virginia on our way there and visited their pretty capitol building, war monument, city museum and cool suspension bridge. 

We spent a few days enjoying Todd and Janell's wonderful house and all the fun things and people there. Amy's family came too, so it was a full house!

We spent one morning on a lovely little hike near them called Pilot Mountain. It had nice views of the surrounding area and was really pretty. We were so sad to hear that only two days later the mountain caught fire, burning several hundred acres!

We also visited their cute little historical downtown area. 

It is fun seeing new places as a family.

Skills

Logan has been interested in learning various survival skills lately. One day he spent quite a while perfecting different knots. Cool kid.

Artist

Ali is enjoying learning lots of new art techniques in her art class at school. She is getting so good! From things she tells me her art teacher says and does, I think he's pretty impressed with her talent too (but tries not to be too obvious about it, so as not to make other kids feel bad). That, and the fact that she has 103% in her class tells me it's not just me who thinks she has talent!

Primary Program

We enjoyed the primary program this year, and were told by many that Jake stole the show. He had two parts and made the congregation laugh both times. First he told us that, "The Holy Ghost is NOT a ghost. He's a guy who can tell you what to do. Like if you're bored he can give you an idea of something to do." And, "I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus love me because all these primary people tell me EVERY TIME I come to church. (Thumbs up given to the crowd with a grin before he sits down.)" I'm Facebook friends with most of the ward now (something I avoided for a long time, but embraced with my current calling), so they all know about his Jakeisms, and were undoubtedly hoping for something extra from him during the program, and he delivered. Love this kid.

Funny Eli

I'm not sure who took this picture with my phone, but it makes me laugh.

Raman Noodles

Raman Noodles was a staple of Sunday afternoon lunch when I was growing up, so I bought some the other day to see if my kids would like them. They do.

A Girl and her Dog

The kids sure love Max.

Football and Soccer

Eli's super fun PE teacher runs an after school sports program and Eli loved participating in the football/soccer session. He plays football with his friends most days at recess and he talked several of them into joining the session too, so he had a great time.