100th Birthday Celebration

For Thanksgiving we traveled to Arizona to join over 100 other relatives from my mom's side to celebrate my Grandpa and Grandma Westover's 100th birthdays! Neither of my grandparents are alive, but if they were they would have been delighted to see so many of their descendants together for the occasion! It was fun to take part in this huge family reunion. Even with as many as are pictured above, there were still many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and even great, great grandchildren who could not attend. All of my grandparents' five children and their spouses were present: Joan (blue t-shirts are her kids, grand kids, and great-grand kids), Jim (turquoise t-shirts...a lot of his couldn't be there), Nancy (yellow t-shirts are her kids and grand kids), Carol (red t-shirts are her kids, grand kids...including us, she's my mom!), Bruce (brown t-shirts are his kids and grand kids.) What an amazing legacy!

Aaron, the girls, and I traveled Thanksgiving day, arrived that night and had dinner with my parents at my Aunt Nancy's house. The rest of my siblings arrived later that night. The next morning the reunion officially began. We enjoyed seeing aunts, uncles, and cousins we hadn't seen for years! There we activities like volleyball, basketball, humanitarian projects, and lots of display tables with old pictures and grandma and grandpa's memorabilia...but mostly we just visited. We had a big turkey dinner and later that night the celebration continued with watching a DVD that my dad had created on the life and heritage of my grandparents, followed by birthday cake and games. The next morning we had breakfast and said good-bye. What a lot of fun!

Me with my siblings who were there: Shawn, Tausha, Jason, Jeremy, me, Jonathan

All of my parents' grandchildren

Grace and Eve were obsessed with their new baby cousin, Savannah (Jonathan's little girl)

After leaving the reunion we had the privilege of visiting my best friend Julyssa and her family who happen to live only about thirty minutes away from where my Aunt does! We spent Saturday afternoon playing with them until early evening when Julyssa took our family portraits (she's a photographer.) Afterwards we had dinner and continued our fun. Their little girl Nyomi got along so well with Grace. We hardly saw them because they were off playing in Nyomi's room most of the time. They even had a slumber party that night in sleeping bags! We spent the night at their house and headed home the next morning after going to church with them. What a long drive home it was!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving

Here's Grace posing in her "Indian" vest and headband that she made in school today.

We had a pretty busy day. After dropping Grace off at preschool, Eve and I headed to the gym for my step class and then directly to target for some things we needed. Then we went home for fifteen minutes so I could take a quick shower, and by then it was time to pick Grace up from school. Minutes after leaving the school Grace realized she desperately had to use the potty...so we made a quick stop off at home (literally minutes...Eve stayed in the car) before heading to the park for Grace's friend's birthday party. We left the party a little early so I could drop the girls off at my friend's house so they could play with their buddies while I went visiting teaching. We were essentially gone from about 8:00 this morning until just after 4:00 p.m.! I'm so glad every day is not that crazy.

On our way home from my friend's house at the end of it all, Grace said (in reference to her buddy Jake who she's been playing with since before they were both two)"When I'm a mommy (that's what she calls all grown up women), maybe I'll find him and marry him!" That made me laugh!

A Few of Grace's Thoughts...

On our short drive home from the park this afternoon, Grace was rambling on and on. Her monologue went something like this, "I wish I could have a cat instead of a sister, because I don't like children. But I like myself. I like girls, but not boys...I don't like boys. Except some boys...I like some boys."

10 Years Later...

This past weekend was my high school 10 year reunion. It doesn't seem like it's been that long! When I first got the invitation I was hesitant about going, but now I'm so glad I did. It was so much fun!

Aaron and I drove down to L.A. Saturday morning (leaving the girls at my brother's house in Clovis...thank you Jason and Becky!) We took our time and enjoyed the peaceful drive (no kids screaming in the back :)) We met Charlotte, Chelsea, Julyssa, and their husbands down there before we actually went to the reunion that night. We all traveled distances to be there and it was so much fun to be all together again. It was just like old times! It was also great to see people that I literally hadn't seen for ten years! There is something so cool about reuniting with an old friend. A lot of people looked the same, but apparently they thought that I'd changed the least...because I got the award for "Changed the Least." I'm not sure how I feel about that...I don't exactly like the way I looked in high school, hee hee!

We had so much fun talking and dancing. I haven't danced like that in a while! I was even outlasting Aaron...and he's the one that is usually dragging me out onto the dance floor! The fun continued after we left the reunion at midnight. We went to "Norm's" (a diner) for a late night snack...we just didn't want the fun to end!

Some girlfriends from GHS: Ailin, Risa, Julyssa, me, Faarnaz (I've known Risa and Faarnaz since kindergarten!)

Julyssa and me dancing the night away!

Travis and Chelsea, Brady and Charlotte, Julyssa and Adam, Maren and Aaron

If you want to see more fun pictures from that night click here to visit Julyssa's blog. She took more pictures than I did...and she got some really good ones!

Halloween

We had a really fun Halloween. Grace was the fairy godmother from Cinderella. She came up with the idea on her own, and over a month ago! At first I was worried about coming up with a costume, but after my mother-in-law found the dress and wand all I had to come up with was the hooded cape, which was a lot easier to make than I thought it would be! Eve was an adorable Annie (from the musical "Annie"...you know...the sun will come out tomorrow...) I just had to change a few things on her little red dress and spray her hair red and we were set! No curling required!

We did some Trick-or-Treating in our neighborhood and went to a Halloween party at the church. The girls had a blast!

I think Aaron looks really cute in this picture, and here are our Jack-o-lanterns in front of our house!