Our First Thanksgiving

So Thanksgiving this year was a blast! All my family was able to come home for Thanksgiving so that made it tons of fun. Lori and her family were able to come down which was a pleasant surprise. :) I thought I would share some of my favorite things that happened over Thanksgiving.

1. Even a Two Year Old Loves Karaoke :)
One night I was helping give Drew and Brooke a bath and as we were getting in they looked in the closet and saw a microphone. After baths were over Brooke and Drew each got a turn to sing a song in the microphone. Brooke made up a song and Drew sang A Whole New World. Since Brooke loves princesses Drew also knows a ton of Disney songs. It was so great, Lo and I even joined in as his back-up singers. The next day I had this brilliant idea, where instead of singing into microphones that weren't plugged in how about we actually get out the old Singalodian. In case you were wondering everyone thought it was a hit. I guess I should clarify that. Everyone under the age of 5 and me thought it was a hit. The three kids would rotate singing in the microphone. Zach loved to sing the ABCs. He also loved to request songs that others should sing in the microphone. Brooke loved making up her own songs. Drew only sang two songs. A Whole New World (from Aladdin) and Once Upon a Dream (from Sleeping Beauty). For much of the time I was Drew's singing partner. It was so much fun. Nieces and nephews are so much fun, they find joy in the greatest things.

I didn't want you to miss the fun, so here is short sneak peak.

Drew singing away
Brooke getting into the beat (sorry it's blurry but I love the picture)
Zach my happy bud

2. Annual Dipping Chocolates
Every Thanksgiving, we get together to dip chocolates. When we were younger my parents used to give chocolates to so many people. I remember waking up in the morning and heading over to Grandma Hurst's house and spending the rest of the day dipping chocolates. I think we would have about 3 people dipping at a time and then the other kids would rotate in and out of dipping. As kids every one had to dip, even if you weren't that good at dipping chocolates you eventually would improve with time. Things haven't changed much. All the kids helped dip, except for Lori who watched the young'uns, which was much appreciated. Plus, she is allergic to chocolate so dipping chocolates kind of lost its fun. It probably took us about 5-7 hrs to dip/prepare everything. By the end of it I was ready to be done. The funny part was we dipped a ton of peanut clusters this year :). Kim bought a lot of peanuts this year. Good thing I love peanut clusters. The great thing about Chocolate Time is that now Ben and I will have great goodies to snack on.

3. BYU vs. Utah Football Game
Ben and I have season tickets to the BYU Football/Basketball games because we got an AllSports pass this year. Thus, our weekends have been full of driving down to Provo to see the BYU football games. I have yet to fully embrace football, but I am learning more about the sport. A couple of days before the football game, one of Ben's old roommates posted on Facebook that he had a ticket to the BYU/Utah football game that he was willing to sell. I asked Ben to see if he could get it. I have two brother-in-laws, Brandon and Kram, that asked us if we could try to get them tickets to the game. We were able to get the ticket, so now we were one step closer on getting my brother-in-laws their wish. As the day of the game approached we were still one ticket short and I wasn't sure of what I wanted to do. I could either go to the game with Ben and Brandon (my brother-in-law) or I could give my ticket to Kram. I decided that the game should be a guys trip, so I gave my ticket to Kram. From Ben's description it sounds like they had a wonderful time talking about sports and enjoying the game. For some reason I think he enjoys going with people who actually understand and enjoy the game a little bit more than I do ;). It was a good game. A little closer than Ben would like but at least BYU ended up winning in the end so he was happy. He was telling me that they were talking about getting tickets to March Madness this year since it is coming to SLC. I think that is a fabulous idea, hopefully they will be able to get enough tickets because I would love to go. Basketball is one thing that I really enjoy.

4. Being with Family
Being with family is probably one of the things that I enjoy the most. I absolutely love the holidays when we all get together. We don't get to do it as often as we used to, but it is so much fun staying up and playing games, chatting, and playing with the kids. It was also fun because Ben got to know my clan a little bit better, especially Lori and Kram's clan. Ben said it was totally different because he had never seen such a happy Drew. Drew was such a talker and he was so happy!

Anyways, I think overall Thanksgiving was a success at least I think so. Ben might have a different opinion but I don't think so :).