What a week!

We spent the entire last week in Salt Lake for Thanksgiving. I think we crammed everything we could into one week, and had a lot of fun while doing it. We celebrated Alene's birthday with her with an Italian feast. We ate until we were sick on Thanksgiving, oh wait, we (or maybe just I) ate until I was sick all week. We did some shopping, IKEA is now our favorite store. The kids did a craft. We had a dessert contest. We got to meet Ashlyn, our newest niece, and go to her baby blessing. I got to go to a surprise breakfast for Alene with all of her sisters. We visited John's grandparents. We visited a few friends. We saw the lights on temple square (Owen was grumpy enough to make this more work than fun). And we let the kids ride on the train (tracks) while we were down town. We even completed our trip in style by having a child throw up in the car on the way home (Funny side note...Owen gagged as we drove past Jerome on the way to SL because of the strong cow smell (Ains prayed on the night before we left that the cows wouldn't be as stinky on the way home), so I guess we shouldn't have been surprised when he lost his lunch, literally, on the way home...although there were no stinky cows around this time). What a week! A fun one though!

I feel like this picture really captures the chaos that was temple square...good times!

This is what my kids do when I say smile!

All the cousins working on their snowflake craft.

Ains and Mikaela riding the train.
Owen and Nicholas waiting to ride the train...they were really excited! I'm not sure why this picture doesn't convey that.
Do we look more or less excited about the train than the kids???
This is the best picture I got of the baby...sad but true. She really is a beautiful baby. I bet you could find better pics here.
These are all of the desserts entered in the contest. There was a pudding thing (sorry Matt, I don't remember what it was called), a pumpkin cheesecake, chocolate coconut cake, chocolate mint bunt cake, and peanut butter cheesecake. After the votes were tallied Yanira's pumpkin cheesecake was the winner!