"I'm actually feeling much better..."

Okay, so we're not totally dead yet. Even though Amy is still sleeping currently (6:30 - who can blame her?), I thought I'd take a few minutes to update our blog just a touch...

We had a great Thanksgiving with both sides of the family (most of them) coming to Elko to share in the holiday. On Wednesday, my brother Matt, wife Raylene, and way-cute daughters Natania and Elise came from Sunnyvale, CA. I personally haven't seen the girls (Raylene included) in what must be a couple of years so it was fantastic to see them and get to hear all of their funny stories about parenting such intelligent children. We all got together at my cousin's house that lives in Spring Creek for Thanksgiving on Thursday. The extended list included my parents, my brother and his fam, our six of course, Troy & Kirin & their boys, aunt Kris, cousin Jon and Allie and their son Liam, and a couple of other friends of Kirin. We had a lot of great food and only had to reach around the fig jelly and pickled watermelon rind to get to it. Amy made Chocolate Frango which was exceptionally good (an old family "tradition" from my grandmother) and all seemed well with the world.

When we got back to the house on Thursday night, Dennis & Kaley and their five kids had made the trip from Alpine, UT even though Kaley wasn't feeling 100% up to snuff. Mike and Kaye had arrived on Wednesday to help work on the bathroom in the basement and work towards completing that project so that our boys don't have to just try to pee down the drain in the floor. We guys spent a good portion of Friday puttering with the tile and working on other small-ish projects that have been waiting for me to have a day off and a bit of motivation to get to them. When the time came, we were priveleged to get to have a big Thanksgiving meal all over again on Friday afternoon. Quite delicious (even though I expected it to be a bit diminished because it was a lot of the same (or similar) foods that we'd had just the day prior) I must say.

On Saturday, everyone sort of split up and Mike & Kaye and Dennis's family all headed back to Utah. I had to work but Amy was able to spend a good portion of the day with Matt & Ray & the girls as well as my parents as they headed out to Lamoille and played in the leaves, had lunch at O'Carroll's, and got to visit some more. That night, Amy and I went bowling with Troy & Jon as well as the D'Arrieta's that we kidnapped to take with us. We had a really good time and got to bowl three games each. Towards the end of the night (about 11:45), the group on the lane next to us packed it up and so we got to have a goof-off lane and see how much spin we could put on the ball while keeping our "serious" lane that was tracking our scores. Troy and Jon ended up being the "Champions of the World" by besting Amy and I by a measly 7 pins. I'm not sure that win would qualify them for any soft of tournament in Reno but we all seemed to relish the good times.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends, family, loved ones, pets, neighbors, companions, strangers, the housing department, social services, public employees, and whomever else you were able to be with!