Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello all and Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone is doing great!  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving out here, and Monica continues to hone her turkey skills!  It was great!  Today we went to the park and flew a kite.  Brooke has really wanted to for the last few days.  She had so much fun!  I've got a video of it later in the post!

On Tuesday night I got sick and my stomach hurt a bunch which ended up leading to me not really sleeping that night.  So Wednesday I took the day off work to recover.  Not exactly the way we wanted to get ready for Thanksgiving, but I got an extra day off!! :)

On Thanksgiving morning I ran the Parker 5k.  It's not officially timed and is more laid back, but it sounded fun.  There were over 2000 runners from 27 states!  So I guess Parker is a Thanksgiving destination, and it makes sense why it's a more laid back race.  I'm still trying to recover from my plantar fasciitis, but I still ran 24:30 which is just under 8 min/mile, so I'm happy with that!  I also got some cool ear muffs for registering.

On Thanksgiving we had some friends over for dinner who were also sticking around and didn't have family near by.  Everyone came over and enjoyed dinner, and after they all insisted on playing Egyptian Architects!  Everyone seemed to have a good time, and Shaylee even won her first time playing!  Sadly we didn't take any pictures... but everyone looked dapper and we had a splendid ball!

Friday morning we decided to head out and check for some Black Friday deals early in the morning.  We hit the sweet spot where all of the night shoppers were asleep, and most people just don't wake up that early if they don't have to, so the stores were pretty much empty.  We learned a valuable lesson though, you really need to check out ads before you go to stores, because as we just randomly stumbled around we didn't really find anything we wanted that was on sale.  Brooke did find this bear holding a bear that she held for a little.  Also, we let her walk down the toy aisle and she basically pulled everything out once to play with.  She found a shopping cart that she HAD to push around the store, and we were scared of a tantrum when we had to put it back.  When we finished shopping we told her we were done and needed to go and she said "put cart back!" I walked her back to where we got it and she let me help her put it back on the shelf and we left.  If she'll put everything back when it's time to leave I sure don't mind her playing with toys at the store!

Friday night, Parker does their tree lighting in downtown.  We headed over a little early so we could play on the playgrounds before.  It was still dark, but we played on the playground for a little while and Brooke had a lot of fun.

At 5:30 the mayor said a little spiel and then turned on the lights.  We walked around and looked at the trees and even got a free cookie!

Saturday morning we made pancakes for breakfast.  Then we spent most of the day cleaning up fall decorations and putting up Christmas things.  We got our lights up on our house!!

And we got and decorated our Christmas tree!  Brooke was so excited to get a tree, and she had a lot of fun decorating it!

Jelly has also been very curious about the Christmas tree, but she seems to like it too!  And so far no climbing!

Today as mentioned we took Brooke to the park and flew her kite!  She was so excited to fly the kite and we kept going until the wind gave out and we couldn't keep it up running!  When we couldn't get the kite up any longer it was finally time to go down the slides!  Afterward we made the rounds and dropped off Thanksgiving turkey cookies at my home teaching families houses!

Today in Sacrament meeting a member shared his conversion story.  While he was sharing the Spirit reconfirmed to me the truth of the Book of Mormon.  I have recently revamped my scripture study and have noticed a huge difference in my life!  I definitely have gained a lot of new insights and felt the Spirit more on a daily basis.  While I have been reading lately I was thinking it would be nice to have a new confirmation of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, and today it came.  I know the Book of Mormon is true.  I know that it can change our lives.  I know that it contains the truths of the gospel and can bring us closer to our Savior, Jesus Christ.  I love the Book of Mormon and testify of it's truthfulness.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.