What do I not have to be thankful for??

*Play song "Kind and Generous" with this post

Alrighty this was the last day of November, so I was determined to finish this post before it was over, since it was what this month was all about! Now I'm not sure how long ago this tradition was started, but I guess I started noticing it last year but did not participate until this year. That tradition is for many people to post something they are thankful for each day in November on Facebook. Actually, I wasn't planning to do it this time because for the first week, as I looked over everyone's posts, all I could do was think that everyone else had much more to be thankful for than me..... stupid, right? 

So, at first I just tried, somewhat begrudgingly to post because I felt like this would help me out of my slump of: we lost our house, we are worried about insurance/money... everything! Having to supposedly quit my job (which is really mostly a joke since I am there just as much as when I was actually teaching!)... anyway the list could really go on and on... hence why I needed out of this sort of thinking! And actually I was surprised at how the thankfulness just kept coming, in fact my hardest thing was narrowing it down to just one thing a day (which most of the time I failed at... miserably!). Anyway, the whole experience was so refreshing and really wonderful and I invite everyone to do it next year... or all year long!

But anyway, onto our Thanksgiving week (and yes it was a whole week because it was chuck full of food, family and a whole lot of chaos! But it was great!

First, Steve's aunt Ellen and her family came into town from California, which we haven't seen them in a few years and their youngest, Sabrina is just a couple weeks older than Em :) Yeah, Steve's dad comes from a family of 8 kids, and him being the oldest and Ellen the youngest means his grandkids and her kids end up being similar ages, very confusing but fun all the same! Since they were going to be here surrounded with family, they decided to have their son baptized here and we were lucky enough to attend and that was on Sunday. 

*And I apologize for the quality of these pictures because our DSLR camera is broken and is at the sony place being fixed :( So all of these pictures came from our basic digital camera or Em's iPhone (I know I said I wasn't going to post anymore pictures from her iPhone on the blog, but I think I'm getting the hang of it!)

 The crew while we were skyping with Steve's uncle who couldn't make it to Utah

 Steve's cousin Jenny (Bowen) and her daughter Laci are back from Korea! Her husband will be joining them soon!

 Em has liked playing with pianos lately and actually creates melody when she does *mom sees piano lessons in her near future!* She graced us all with her talent that evening

 Steve's aunt Debbie and her husband Bob (Bowens), Ellen (Jones), Matt Bowen who just returned from his mission, and aunt Karen (McCash)

 Some of the kids goofing around. That's Anni (Buresh) and Sabrina (Jones) and the crazy boys, Levi (Buresh) and the newly baptized Daniel (Jones)!

They had a lot of fun together!

The day before Thanksgiving was full of preparation (dinner for close to 60 people takes a lot of that!), and a short break to get some much needed (since September) blood work for Em done. She was happy, sweet and energetic through the whole process! Love my brave girl!

Thanksgiving Day

Only got a picture of the sweet cousins (that are only four days apart) at Steve's parents house, because like I said there was a lot going on there!

At the Andrews'

This picture is really poor quality (usually the iPhone does a pretty good job, so this must have been my fault because the ones Steve took are much better!) But these are the boy cousins that were there: Brett Andrews, Connor Wilde (my baby brother), Ryan Andrews (my mom's twin brother's son), Bryan Wilde being himself (my older brother), and the freakishly tall (for this family) Chase Adams!

And the girl cousins in attendance: the freakishly tall (for this family) me, Alexis Adams Holt (one of my "twin" cousins, we're 2 months apart), Sarah Andrews, and Cassidy Adams. Love these girls!

Black Friday

Steve and I are not really big fans of the hustle and bustle of the "Black Friday" happenings! But we did want to do something fun with our girl, so we went to see the new Muppets movie and we all really enjoyed it!

But after the movie, we figured we were right at the mall and Costco, so it couldn't hurt to check some things out... and boy am I glad we did! We got all the perks of the sales, but the crowds had significantly cooled down after 7 pm!

This is $40 worth of clothes (normal prices would have equaled around $200!), totally worth it!

Sadly we didn't have the luck we would have hoped at Costco, but Em still enjoyed herself :)

On Saturday, we decided to brave the retail world again and headed up to a place that I have been dreaming of going to ever since I left Germany over 8 1/2 years ago!

And yeah, that would be H&M up at the Fashion Place Mall, finally here in Utah! If you don't know what it is, it is much like the European Gap but with better prices :)

After that, we met my family at PF Changs for dinner to celebrate my mom and her twin brother Kenneth's birthdays (they don't celebrate them together very often!)

Here's Em laughing it up playing some mean percussion with the chopsticks! 

And here's Em modeling her new outfit from H&M before we headed up to Riverton to see the former Elder Bowen give his homecoming talk from his recent mission

FYI, that dress was $12 and that was the regular price! See told you!

So wow, we had a great Thanksgiving (Sunday to Sunday) and our hearts are full with so much we have to be grateful for! We have a great majority of our Christmas shopping done (frugally might I add!). So now that I've actually started in on recognizing our blessings, they just keep coming!

Like this..

These are two "nice" checks from the past two years of income taxes, that the state of Utah withheld because of a "discrepancy" from a side business we had for a bit that never made any money. Enough for a new camera so that we'll have one for Christmas (and don't worry we're selling the old one once we get it back), as well as a possible to trip to San Antonio in the summer of 2012 (I'm sure you Ch18 folks know what this means to us!)

Now if only I was blessed enough to get up our dang Christmas decorations!... or at the very least, the tree, because then I'd have a reason to wrap all the presents I'm excited about!