Happy Thanksgiving!: Week of Nov 24-30

Sunday 30 Nov. 2008 – Thanksgiving week

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We missed our extended family members this weekend, but trust that you had a good holiday wherever you spent it.

This week was nice. Only 3 days of work then 4 days of weekend. Every week should be like that! People at Intel started leaving on vacation on Tuesday, so things slowed down and Troy was able to catch up on a couple of tasks that had been neglected.

Wednesday we got the first rain in the valley since August 30th. Nearly 3 months of dry and sunny. As the sun sank low around 4 or 5pm there was a break in the clouds to the west which created a beautifully bright full rainbow. Troy followed the rainbow most of the way home before the sun set. Very pretty.

Thursday morning was the annual ward Turkey bowl. The Men and Young Men (youth) of the ward met at the Islands park and played flag football. We were afraid that we might have to call the game off due to the rain, but just as we were starting the game, the clouds broke up and the sun came shining through! Troy took the girls down and let them play on the playground. After trying to keep score, Katie even decided to join the game for a little while. There were about 20 people that showed up by the time we were done. We played for nearly two hours – until none of the “old” guys (myself included) could run anymore. Then we broke for juice and donuts. Of note: Tom Pawlak – the most avid football player in the ward was set on coming – even if it was raining a bit, but decided that he better leave about game time to get to his family’s T-giving celebration in Thatcher.

Thursday afternoon was spent cooking, cleaning and setting up for dinner. Grammy and Grandpa Z (Ann and Martin) and Bob and Sarah came over for the evening. After a delicious Turkey dinner, we sat around the table and played Rachel’s homemade Family Memories game. We ended the evening with Zachreson family slides. After watching those slides, Katie decided that we should try to get some of the slides that Papa Willes has of Troy and his family when he was young. Maybe we can have Grammy Willes bring a few rolls down with her when she comes next time.

Friday was time to clean up the cluttered garage and put up the Christmas lights. While Troy and Rachel cleaned the Garage, the kids setup a table and put some of the items we cleaned out up for sale. In order to “attract” customers, they started doing a little dance and made up a song to go with it. After a few minutes of singing and dancing, but no customers they gave up that Marketing campaign – which is good, because the way they were singing and dancing, we weren’t sure what kind of business they were going to attract. So now they decided to walk to the houses of their friends in the neighborhood to advertise. This brought some of the neighborhood kids down to take a look, and brought in a couple dollars in revenue. After counting it up that afternoon, Emma announced, "We have three dollars and thirty-three cents. If we split that up three ways for Me and Katie and Claire, we will each get one dollar and eleven cents." We thought that was pretty good for a 2nd grader – without a calculator.

Troy and Rachel got most of the outside lights setup. The kids were getting bored that evening, so we even put up the Christmas tree before they went to bed.

Saturday was pretty low-key. Troy made pancakes for breakfast and then did a few chores around the house while Rachel went out shopping – not really Christmas shopping – just for household items. Saturday afternoon Troy took Claire and Emma to the city library to look at books and color. Saturday night we met the Zachresons (including Tana, Haylee and Haydn) at Carls Junior (with playland) for dinner. Instead of letting the leftover pies go to waste (or worse - Troy’s waist) we took them to the restaurant in a little cooler and then pulled them out for dessert. We are regulars at that restaurant and it is never very busy when we are there, so the staff didn’t complain.

Sunday was 5th Sunday. There were no meetings before or after church and no family dinner, so we all enjoyed a relaxing Sabbath.

Zach
Zach’s words of the week are “Awesome!” and “Cool!” He even uses them correctly.

He was pointing at some sea creatures and knew the words for fish, crab and whale. There was a fourth one that he wanted to know the name of so he asked Daddy. Troy didn’t know what it was either, so he told Zach it was a mollusk. After trying to say mollusk a couple times, they decided just to call it another “fish”.

Zach’s motus operandi this week has been to find an interesting looking box of toys, carry it to somewhere in house and then dump the entire contents onto the floor. After playing with some of the toys in the pile for a couple minutes he will walk through them to spread them around a little more. It’s hard for his parents to keep up with the sheer volume of messes this creates. They are working to train him not to dump the whole box out.

Claire
The Claire-ism of the week happened after we put up some of our Christmas tree this weekend.
Claire: “Mommy – how long until Christmas?”
Rachel: “One more month”
Claire: Excited “Hooray only one month!”
then thoughfully “How many days is that?”
Rachel: “Thirty Days”
Claire: Appalled “Thirty Days! That’s a long time!”
Well, it might be a long time in Claire years, but it’s going to be here might quickly I’m afraid.

Emma
Emma and Claire played school and teacher for a good part of the weekend. I guess they live it so much that it’s hard to just stop cold turkey… Ha Ha. get it? Thanksgiving. “Cold Turkey” Ha Ha Ha.

Katie
Katie has been struggling to read as many books as she is supposed to. She has to read nearly one per week. She tested at a 9th grade level, so she has to pick good-size chapter books that are at or above that level.

I think that should do it for now.
Until next time…