Putting up Christmas!

 One of my favorite things to do is to have a Christmas tree in our room.  It is a small tree and it looks pretty sparse, but we call it our angel tree in honor of all the angels (family members who have died) that are part of our family.

 Our Christmas tree in our family room seen from upstairs.  With Meli's one present under the tree from her family. 

Meli's family sent a fun package. In the package were fun  Christmas advent calendars and they also sent this cute advent calendar for Meli and Kara. What a fun treat each day and a great tradition!     The rest of the pictures below are from decorating this year!

         

 One of the fun advent calendars that Meli's family sent with delicious Lindt's chocolate!   Merry Christmas!  It was fun to decorate with Meli; she was very helpful.  She was excited to help.   On Friday Kara and I went shopping on Black Friday.  I had them pick out things that they would like.

For the last month I have been doing Insanity.  Until I thought I would nearly die from pulling/snapping sounds  from my lower back.  It is a hard workout, but I love how good I feel after doing it.  Now, I think I am done,  so sad, but after not being able to move, I think it is time to STOP!   I guess I will just have to go back to other forms of exercise! :(

November according to our cameras

 November has been a busy month.  Kara performed in her play "Footloose."  Many of her days were filled with practices and even more practices.   She did a fantastic job being a mom to Ren! Above is a picture of some of her friends who came and saw her. 

 

 

Kara, Meli and Tianna at a play!

 

 Another night after Kara's play.  Matt and I went and saw it 3 out of the 4 days. 

 

Kara's perfect report card.  

Kara being very silly!

 Thanksgiving day--=-apparently Matt was taking pictures

 We had two tables.  One table for 16 and younger and the other table for the adults.  One table sure seems to be having more fun than the other.    I finally made something I saw on pinterest.  The little Oreo turkeys on the table.   The flowers were some Kara got after her play.

 The adult table.

 Preparing the food!   This was a very relaxing Thanksgiving.   Everyone helped and did a fabulous job!   It was Meli's first time celebrating Thanksgiving. She said she had never seen so much food for one meal.  

 

For Thanksgiving we had my brother Matthew's family, our family (minus Coby) and Anne.

 We had a lot of pies.  Suzanne made some yummy pies and so did Anne and Spencer.

 Hanging out after dinner!

After we cleaned up and had pie our family, Anne and Matthew's family went to see the movie Frozen.  I will have to say it was a terrific well done movie!!!  

We are grateful Kara was in a car accident and came out unharmed. We had a lot of fun bills this month that came up as everything seemed to break.   $1500 dollars in repairs (it is actually probably more), but we are so grateful it wasn't more.  

We hope you all had a very Happy Thanksgiving!   We are grateful for our family and friends! 

Turkey here we come!

Kara and I just reserved our tickets to go and visit Coby in Turkey for his birthday.  We are super excited.  Kara is in shock.   She has never left the country.  Kara wants to travel the world and so Matt really thought she should be able to go too!  Personally, he thinks this trip will cause her to not want to travel the world, but I think it will do the opposite and especially if Coby has anything to do with it!   WOW!!!   We are excited!!!  We will be there almost a week to see Coby and celebrate his birthday and see the sights.  Coby has been keeping us abreast on plane tickets and they just hit a record low now that there is a direct flight to Paris from SLC.  We are super excited to see him in less than 4 months.  I have been working over time to pay for our tickets and since Matt and I have been doing the Dave Ramsey program we have sold some stuff and paid off all of our debt except for our home which we are making LARGE payments too.   Doing this has been giving me much more peace of mind.   It works.  I love having no debt and saving money all over the place.  It has been good for us and now we are excited to go to Turkey.



Below is a picture of Coby finishing another month of Turkish classes!!! 

We are planning a trip for a family vacation sometime in Jan 2015 or February 2015 to take our home family on a cruise.  It is good to save money for such a fun event.  One of my boys asked me if he were married if we would pay for his wife too!  I was thrilled and of course I said yes. Someone thinking of getting married; this makes me happy!  I can't wait to be a grandma and spoil my grandchildren with love, time and attention. 

Footloose

Kara has been working really hard and attending many practices for Footloose that will happen later this month!

 

More Halloween

 Meli and Kara went to a YW Halloween Party.   

 Our Halloween dinner.  It was basically breakfast for dinner with some fun names.
The pancakes were called  Rotten Pumpkin Fritters
Scrambled eggs: Scrambled Brains
Whipped Snail Slime: Butter
Maggot Butter: Peanut Butter
Ghost Dandruff: Powered Sugar
Werewolf Eyeballs: Grapes
Blooded Nuggets: Strawberries 
Fried Intestines: Bacon
Sliced Kidneys: Sausage
Witches Brew: Juice

During dinner we had many trick or treaters  (we had trick or treaters)  Meli answered the door to the cute ones and handed out candy. She said Halloween is very different in Germany.

After we ate Kara and Meli headed out to a Halloween party to one of Kara's friends.  One of the girls dance groups went did a dance of Thriller.  Kara and Meli also went trick or treating.  Kara wanted Meli to get a full experience.  

These are the cute pumpkins we did for FHE.  Kara's is the Hunger games one, Meli's is the scary face and I just painted mine.

 And in Turkey it does look like they were doing some kind of Halloween celebration. 

 Spencer and Anne at one of the parties they went to for Halloween.   Colton had to work 10 hours at Chick Fil A and it turned out to be a very busy day!!!!