Thanksgiving was really good. We stopped by Col. Jacobs' house and helped bake pies. Annette (Col's wife) and I are making this a tradition now. :) I'll go help bake pies for Christmas, too. She gave me one of her nice glass pie pans (for a wedding gift) and I baked an apple pie in it. Mitch said it was really good. :D I'll have to sharpen my cake making skills, too. I haven't made a cake in FOREVER! :(
Anyway, after Col's house, we went to the family gathering in American Fork. We had it in a cultural hall at a church building! I've never been to a family gathering like that before. I kinda miss the family dinners when we were all together in a house, but it was still nice to be with Mitch's family. Afterwards, Col had invited us back to his house in the evening to play games, so we took Lanae and David (her boy, who is also a cadet in the corps) with us. We got there a bit late, but Col and his family still hadn't even sat down to eat! Poor Annette had been cooking all day. We got there in time for second dinner (HOLY COW, WE WERE STUFFED) and stayed talking until 9:30. All-in-all, it was a great day!
The next morning, Mitch and I woke up and went to Petsmart. We had gotten another rat (a big blue curly-haired rat named Max) a week before and he wasn't settling in well, so we made an exchange. Now, we have Ralph. He's a very tiny baby blue rat and he's settled in nicely. He and Toby are asleep on my lap even as I'm writing this. :) We also got a bigger cage for Toby and (eventually) Ralph to share. Ralph is in the smaller cage until he gets a bit bigger so he can't slip through the bars on the bigger cage. He'll probably only be there a week or so.
Austin and Liz thoughtfully picked up a pre-lighted, plastic Christmas tree for us during their Black Friday shopping at 2 am Friday morning. :) It's just over 6 feet tall and has really colorful lights. I might just buy some really cheap gold lights and switch them out... it would look better with the decorations we have on it. We're just using odds and ends around the house to decorate it right now. Mom sent me a Christmas ornament about two years ago that I still have, so that and a paper one about as old are the only real ornaments. There are fake flowers and some keychains on it that make it look pretty nice. And a bell. And a string of shells. I've got some seashells that I'm going to try to turn into ornaments, so we'll see how that turns out. I've ordered some big pendant necklaces for the girls as Christmas gifts, but I should have a couple left over so those will be turned into ornaments as well. We're excited for Jared (Mitch's brother) to come home from his church mission to Canada this December. He should be home right before New Years. :)
Our tree!
Hope all is going well with all y'all down in Texas! We miss you!Love,
Kadi and Mitch
