End of November, Early December 2022 Photos

 

This is the first 2000 piece puzzle that our kids have done. They finished it quickly, and enjoyed the work. 

This is a goose egg that went into our orange rolls on Thanksgiving. It was so dark and rich and equals 4 chicken eggs.

Anya in the morning chatting with her sisters. 

Rachel in the morning chatting with her sisters.

Rachel and Anya and Arwen in bed together. 

The parakeets, AnnaBanana, and Charles

Sam picked out this Christmas tree and we were lucky because it was the last one in the store. He really loved the flocking and now that we have it, I am actually liking it better than the traditional fake tree. 

I kind of liked this picture of Joseph. 

This is Johnny taking spinning Eliza.

Eliza knows about the camera now and she will smile when it is pointed at her. 

Gideon has spent hours and hours building with legos and he has gotten pretty good. In the bottom picture you can see the little ship that he built of his own design. 

All of these beautiful leaves are in our own yard. We have such a beautiful yard. I feel blessed every time I walk out into it. 

I just like these pictures. I think that they were watching a movie here. We do not have an actual tv, but we have computers and watch more tv than we should through those. 

The above picture is another reason why I love where we live. We can see so many more stars here than in any other place we have lived. 

Joseph was playing around with putting different colors over the flash of the camera. 

The kids caught this mouse. We have always had a mouse problem.

I washed all of this laundry in the bathtub and we hung it out over two lines to dry and when the kids brought it in to fold and put away, they were so astonished at how much laundry that we had, that they photographed it. 

The local church stake put together a beautiful nativity display for the community to come and veiw.

The kids found this hideous thing in the house and let it out free.

Eliza climbed up and fetched John's dark chocolate bar and this is how we found her. 

This is our house, 15 degrees from true north. 

Thanksgiving 2022

  

We had Thanksgiving, as usual, and as will be usual, at home alone. We are too big of a family to have Thanksgiving away from home and we have too small of a house to have company join us. But with 15 people, Thanksgiving is never small. We quadrupled the jello salad, that for years only John ate, and it was about the first thing to go. The turkey was moist, but I miss my flavor injector and I think that I will replace it. The orange rolls got a little overdone, so a few days after Thanksgiving, I made another batch. They're best right out of the oven, and we have so much other food on Thanksgiving, that it was nice to have them as soon as they came out of the oven as well as when I was actually hungry, and I believe others agreed to that because the later batch that I made went really fast. On the whole, we do enjoy this feast and entrance into the Christmas season. And I can say with an honest heart that I am thankful for my family. 

Ruth could not get a seat around the table and sat at the bar instead. 

Eliza made a mess of my dinner, as she was seated on my lap, and then when I put her down, she was very sad, so I ended up nursing her on the couch while the Thanksgiving meal continued. 

Joseph, Joshua, and Arwen had an eating contest, since they made it a contest of who could stay eating the longest, rather than who could eat the most, Arwen won out by simply eating slowly.

The house got pretty hot. The oven was working overtime and someone and turned the thermostat off from auto, so it would heat or cool depending on the temperature, to heat. It was 80 degrees inside not too long before dinner. 

We always put the turkey carcass out for the animals, wild and domestic, and this is the site that greeted us the next day. These are vultures and the large tree they are sitting in rises up close to where we put the carcass. 

Samuel Tales

 I got this in an email from John and it seemed worthy enough to be immortalized by this blog. 

I was telling Sam and Susan about Christmas, and that Mary was
pregnant and Joseph was upset. Here was the conversation:

Sam: How does god make people?
Sam: Could you show us a picture?
Susan: Yah (agreeing that she would like to see a picture)

Eliza Stories

 At not quite 16 months, I told Eliza to go and get her diaper and she understood me and got her diaper and brought it straight to me. 

Eliza was upset with me and fussing loudly. I asked her if she wanted to see Ruth. She sat up and calmly said "oo, oo," and then went to Ruth.