Thanksgiving Festivities

We spent a wonderful week in Cedar City to celebrate Thanksgiving. I am so grateful that ALL of my siblings were able to come play, although we did miss the padres there to keep us under control. Fortunately we get to visit them in December, woo WOO!

Our Thanksgiving festivities were full of hide and go seek, capture the flag, volleyball, massive face stuffing, hikes/walks, sushi, Mr. Bug, karaoke, dance parties in the dark with both a strobe light AND black light (yes we had to have the dance party in the dark, b/c Lewises just don't have that rhythm...well maybe Alethea and Steph do...), story time each night, dart gun wars, rock climbing at Pocket Rocks, cow branding/vaccinating/de-horning, chocolate chip cookie variations every day, and decorating for Christmas. Quite the jumble of F-U-N!

For Thanksgiving dinner everyone pitched in and had one or two assignments so it didn't seem like too much work to put together a yummy feast consisting of: broiled turkey (click on it to go to our recipe blog for directions for a juicier, faster-cooking turkey), Alaskan cranberries, stuffed mushrooms, sage stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, browned turkey gravy, whole wheat rolls, roasted sweet potatoes, steamed kale, sparkling cranberry-pomegranate-ginger ale, and pumpkin cake.

It's a good thing pictures are worth thousands of words...it saved me a lot of typing tonight. Enjoy!

Action shot of Capture the Flag

Proof that Steph got Mac!

Kaden aka Flag Capturer

Cow branding - this group of 40 cows were wild and frisky! Two cows jumped over the 5 1/2' fence! Abbie and Shawn both got kicked. And here in the pic Abbie was trying to calm down the wildest of the bunch, poor cow was 'having a cow' the whole time.

Sadie's cuteness is too much! Alethea you are pretty cute too :)

David and Kaden hiking at Three Peaks

Beautiful Cactus

Sara, tough-girl-mom, hauling around Sadie, sleep fighter.

Kyson & Kaden the little elves that helped decorate.

Mr. Bug!

Dance party in the dark. See Chris I didn't get you, sheesh!

Cedar Breaks why do you have to be so ugly?

Steph taught us how to make sushi. I want it to be a family tradition every time we get together. SO yummy!

David or Mac?? climbing at Pocket Rocks.

Kaden turned 4 somewhere in the mix of it all! And Chris and Alethea got way older too...Happy Birthday!!

Sisters and the one and only niece! (Mamasita we needed you in this!!)

My dad used to tell us stories about "Petey and Bobby" when we were growing up and I LOVED listening to him, so we tried to have story time every night for the kidlets. This is the perfect topic to end this post...it's 2 am and I'm going to bed. Good night!