Thanksgiving & stuff

For thanksgiving we were invited over to the Baillargeon family home along with the Stephen family.  While I was at girls camp this summer with Kim we talked about how holidays are hard to be away from family, so we decided to do Thanksgiving together, well one of our young women over heard and she convinced her parents to invite both of us over.  We was so nice being treated like family and being taken care of.  We all pitched in for the meal and were stuffed!  We watched football, chatted and played games. The only picture I got was this one of Ian snuggling up to his buddy Eric

in the morning before we had Thanksgiving dinner we decorated for Christmas, watched the Macys Thanksgiving Parade and just played together.

On December 11th, Rylan had his winter band concert.  He was so excited to play that he insisted that we get there early, and we were the first ones there!  The principal had to open the doors for us.  He is only one of two trumpets in his 5th grade band, so we could actually pick out his sound, and he did really well!

                                               
                                                
 Ian is my little gym buddy, they recently started new kids classes that he can do while I am working out.  He can do music, zumba, yoga, karate, or sports classes and he loves it!  He usually tells me that he needs a smoothy because he worked so hard.

 I have so many wonderful church friends that will do fun things with me!  Here was a little group of us that went to the movie Mocking Jay.  We had a blast!

 We love to go swimming at our gym pool. . .

 but when it is time to go home, we are sad!

 Ian my little pantless chef.  Truth is that his church pants wont stay on his little body and I can't find a belt that is small enough to fit him, so when he comes home from church, they come off!

 My young women who I love dearly like my own daughters...ok maybe little sisters!  We gathered together to watch an online broadcast of Lindsey Stirling.

 My nephew Porter came home from his mission.  He served in the Independence, Missouri Mission for two years.  His parents were really good about posting his letters on a blog so we could hear what was going on and his triumphs and trials in bringing people to know Christ.  He has grown so much, I can't think of a better place for 18-21 year olds to be.  He flew home and my niece M'lynn skyped with us so we could see the whole thing and be a part of it.

 Then my brother Jared (Porter's dad) who is a stake clerk who oversees the technical duties figured out a way to stream Porter's talk live in chruch!  We could watch the whole thing right in our family room on our tv!    It was soo amazing to be apart of it all. I love technology!

 A cute picture of Madelyn in a new Christmas sweater we were given by some friends.  She was looking rather presidential with her leopard print and hair up in a bun.

 I was invited to go to a Bears game with my friend Sandy and her mom!  Sandy's husband Steve oversees the security for the Bears players, coach and owner, and they had some extra tickets so she asked if I wanted to go....why not! 

 The Bears played horrible, but it was still a fun experience, I had never gone to a NFL game before.

 Scott went pheasant hunting with his friend, and it was a success, and with some of the meat I made my first pot pie from scratch! Scott loved working with the dogs to get the kill, they actually did the hard work, all he had to do was shoot.