The Thanksgiving Top 10

Here are my top 10 moments from Thanksgiving 2008:

#1 Lighting ceremony at the Walkers

(notice how small the people are in this picture!)

My parents' awesome neighbors always do a huge Christmas light display and the first night they turn them on, they invite everyone over for hot chocolate and doughnuts. We all did a countdown and then they flipped the switch. Can't help but think of this:

#2 Staying up late talking and laughing with my dad and siblings. We woke my mom up several times with the laughter but I bet she drifted back to sleep with a smile on her face each time.

#3 Games! A family tradition. This year the main events were Ticky-tic, Ticket to Ride, and fill in the blank story.

#4 Foreign food. On two of the nights we were there, Dave and Annie cooked meals from their missions for the family. First up was Annie. Lucky for us, she served in Italy! We each got to make our own Italian style pizza.

Next was Dave, who served in Portugal. He made a soup called Caldo Verde and bread. It was pretty tasty and good for you. I didn't take any pictures but it looked just like this:

#5 Fiona the hefty hamster.

Ben's girlfriend Sarah and her sister Cosi joined us for Thanksgiving dinner. Cosi brought her hamster Fiona in to say hello to the kids, and what kid wouldn't love that?

#6 Family temple day. It was wonderful to be in the temple together with all of my family (those old enough) We don't do it often enough and it was truly special. Ben and Devan were kind enough to watch all 9 kids while we went. Thanks guys!

#7 Test taking. What? Yes, that's right. We took some quizzes.

Jake has been getting ready to take the LSAT so he brought one of the previous year's test and administered it to Dave and Jon for fun. No one was surprised to find out that Dave could get into Yale (literally, he scored high enough). And Jon could get into a lot of schools too. Not Yale, but hey I'm still impressed. I would have taken it myself but I have my family fooled into thinking I'm kinda smart and didn't want to blow my cover.

Paige and Noah missed school so much that they kept asking me to write tests for them to take. So we had a math, a spelling, a science, a fill in the blank, and a telling time test. Of course, they are both on the genius level.

And finally, Suzanne has been reading The Five Love Languages so we all took the test to find out what language we speak.

The five options are physical touch, words of affirmation, gifts, quality time, and acts of service. I am bi-lingual; gifts and words of affirmation and Jon is multi-lingual; everything except gifts. It was funny and interesting to see every one's. You get to know people a lot better.

#8 Getting the kids to bed at night. ALL the kids. It was a task. It was an accomplishment. This was a good sight:

#9 Getting family pictures taken.

It had been a long time and I can't wait to get them back.

#10 The lesson in church on relationships.

Specifically finding out that there is actually a term for the dynamic Jon and I have: parent/child relationship. Haha! We both had some major breakthroughs in our "therapy" session and on the drive home and we are working toward interacting as adults. (sarcastic undertones throughout paragraph)

I had a fantastic Thanksgiving with my family! I feel so blessed and lucky. Thanks to Mom and Dad for opening your house to all the mess and noise and chaos. Thanks to everyone for the good times and memories that will last a lifetime and beyond.