::thanksgiving 2011::

We were lucky enough to have time to drive out to UT for Thanksgiving. We joined Kathy and Kari's family in Kathy's St George condo. This was the first time that we got to see the new condo--though it's been in the family for a while. It's very nice and airy and sunny and we approve!
We got to spend some time hanging out together, a little swimming, some yummy food and mostly just good family time.
It was short but worth it.
Thanks for hosting Kathy, and thanks to both you and Kari for working hard on the dinner Thanksgiving day while we finished up the drive out. It was pretty nice to arrive to a feast that was just about ready to go on the table.


(Kris says he is inserting green beans in his mouth to look like fangs for the picture, rather than eating them with his hands like it looks like he's doing. I'm not sure what to beleive!)

A bit more on the St George trip later. We're on our way home now and will get there sometime monday. Let all the crazy holiday times begin!

::tender mercies::

We have had such an outpouring of support and love from friends in the community and in the ward since the baby was born. It's made life for me a lot easier. Relief society sisters have been bringing dinners to us, two of our patients families have brought us dinner, we've had calls and visits and offers of help. We were invited to Thanksgiving dinner and told we weren't to bring more than one item. It's been really amazing and taken a lot of pressure and stress off both Kris and I. We've had good food to eat (more than enough good food) every night and haven't had to think about it.

But the other day something happened that was kind of amazing to me.
One of my most favorite foods at Thanksgvingtime is pecan pie. I just love it. It's delicious and so bad for you and reminds me of home. I'm the only one in the family that really likes it. Max won't even try it (crazy kid) and Kris prefers pumpkin pie if he were given a choice.
So I wanted to make one for us this year even though we weren't having Thanksgiving dinner at home. I needed to make that, and a sweet potato casserole to take to dinner and something else I can't remember now. I sent Kris to the store for the ingredients and he wasn't able to get one of the things that I needed. Then he started getting worried about me and told me I was doing too much anyway. This was probably true. I keep thinking I'm fine and I do a bunch of stuff and then I wear myself totally out.

After Kris got back from the store I got a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. Turns out it was our neighbor across the street. I've never actually met her in person, though Kris and Max have a few times. She was calling because she wanted to make us a pie. She wanted to check and see if pecan was ok?

Uh, yeah! I told her pecan pie was my favorite thing in the world and we'd love one.

Wow, does that seem like a bizarre coincidence or what? So because of the kindness of a sweet neighbor who wanted to take care of us, I've been able to eat delicious homemade pecan pie without having to make it myself.
Is pecan pie really a blessing? Not to my hips probably, but to my soul? Yes.
It really did feel like a tender mercy. And it feels like the windows of heaven have been wide open with everyone's sweet generosity and there really isn't room enough to receive it all. Thanks to everyone and to our heavenly father that has blessed us with such good friends and such a great place for our little family to be.

::happy thanksgiving 2010::

(our halloween pumpkins that sadly never got carved into jack'o'lanterns)

Today both sides of our family are together and complete minus us. It's a bummer that we aren't in Utah right now, but with our little Sandy and all, things just didn't work out.
But we love everyone, and we're so thankful for them today. We're blessed with two great families.
We're also grateful for our little family we've been blessed with here. We love our little boys so much.
And we're thankful for great people out here in Santa Fe who are our friends. We've had a bounty of love and caring poured out on us since the baby was born and it's gone a long ways to making us feel at home.

Happy Thanksgiving friends!!

::thanksgiving report::

We had a peaceful low key Thanksgiving, just staying home together. It was really nice. We ate and relaxed and watched football and played games and sort of slept in.
We decided to just eat a few of our favorite dishes and try to make it simple.
Except cooking a turkey never is really simple. I don't think we needed to get a whole turkey, but we did. It turned out yummy which is a good thing because we're going to be eating it for a while.

I cooked a whole bunch the day before so that Thanksgiving itself could be a little more restful. The fridge was all full of yummy stuff waiting to be cooked.

Everything turned out really good except the rolls which I spent way too long making. They burned. Well the tops looked great, but the parts in the muffin tin all burned. That was a pretty big bummer.
But oh well. At least I had Kris get some frozen ones for a backup so we were ok.

We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole and rolls. I had corn too but I forgot to bring it out. Which was really ok considering how it was way too much food for us as it was.

I struggled with the gravy as usual, but it turned out pretty good. Not exactly how I wanted it but good enough. And seriously, any sort of gravy looks good in my favorite gravy boat ever (thanks Target!)


Max was pretty interested in how Kris was carving the turkey, and had some good questions.

He really wanted the wishbone, but we couldn't find it this year. He was pretty bummed about that. But that's how it goes sometimes. Besides, we make our own luck around here.

This is Max warming up for dinner by munching on a yucky plastic drumstick. Ick.


Happy Thanksgiving to all!
(and to Sultan)

::happy thanksgiving::

Happy Thanksgiving to everybody, we hope you have a wonderful day!

(gotta love kindergarten)

(and kindergarteners)

::thanks::

For Family Home Evening the other night I stole an idea from a friend (which had already been stolen by her from another friend).
I cut out a bunch of shapes so we could put together little turkeys and write something that we're grateful for on each feather.
I thought it was such a cute idea, and I also thought it would be fun to see what Max is grateful for.

So we did it.

They turned out cute, right?
Max's is hilarious looking. He was pretty disappointed in me that I didn't remember to cut out wattles for the turkeys. I think they must've been working on turkeys at school because I for sure did not teach him that word!

He's grateful for friends, family, eating, his body (I think he had a little help with that one), Dad, Mama Fish, Sultan, and lastly me. We had to remind him that he probably should put me on there. We said, "Didn't you forget somebody Max?" He thought hard and said, "Oh yeah, SULTAN!" Ah well, I know he loves me.

I'm grateful for a lot of things, but one of those things is the internet. It's so nice to feel connected to so many friends and family even though we're so far apart. What a blessing.

::thanksgiving report::

We had a good thanksgiving day yesterday. We had been invited to have dinner with a doctor and her family from Kris's work. Unfortunately they had some sickness in the family and so that didn't work out. Hopefully they're doing better now!
Our friends Chad, Melissa and Grant were also going to go over there also. So we talked and decided we'd get together and just have our own little celebration.

I've cooked a turkey one time before, so I figured I could do it again. With some good advice from moms and dads and a yummy not frozen turkey from Trader Joe's we pulled it off.
The turkey turned out really good. My mom told me to use a turkey bag and it sure worked well. By the time Kris went to carve it the meat was basically falling off the bones. And despite a little scare about cooking the giblets in the turkey, all turned out ok. (we couldn't find the giblets, and then my dad told me they're up in the neck cavity.  By that point it had already been cooking for several hours.  I was just hoping they weren't in a plastic bag, or else the whole turkey would be ruined. Luckily they were in paper. Phew.)

We did about half the food and Chad and Melissa brought half the food. It works out well that way I think.

Poor Grant didn't get to eat anything for his first thanksgiving. It's hard to be little sometimes.
Speaking of first thanksgivings, remember this boy?

Luckily for him he was big enough to eat some of the goodies--he had a couple of months on Grant.

Anyway, back to today.
Here's Kris handing out some denture ice to everybody.

Have you heard of denture ice?

It's ice in the shape of dentures. Kind of gross huh? Pretty funny really. Kelly and Lechelle gave us the ice tray and Max loves it. It's pretty weird to see transparent dentures floating in your drink though.

We had a good meal. I didn't get very good pictures of everybody, but I did get pictures. It's so dark around here these days.

Kris got a whole bunch of Stewarts sodas for us to drink. Mmmm they're good.





Max was wearing Kris's scrub top before dinner. He was pretending to be Dr. Max. This was inspired by Kris getting called into the hospital an hour before dinner. It's nice to be on call...
Anyway, Max wore the scrub top all through dinner, and it made for a wonderful bib. We may start using scrub tops for every meal.

Max, of course, was way too hyped up to actually eat his meal. He was busy talking and giggling and fooling around. So as usual he ended up at the table trying to eat long after everybody else had left. It was so funny--I went in there and there he was very carefully cutting slices off his piece of cranberry sauce with his knife and fork. It was surprisingly civilized of him. And cute of course.

He didn't get all his food finished, but he did end up eating at least some of it. It was quite the effort to get that much done.

After dinner we cleaned up, then we watched some football of course. Then as per Max's request we watched Wall E. This was thanks to Grandma Kathy who had sent it to Max as a thanksgiving gift the day before. It was fun. Then we ate some delicious pumpkin and pecan pie. I was really full after all that.

Then Max held Grant on his lap for a while, which was hilarous.

Grant loves Max, and Max loves Grant. They're good buddies.


And then we called it a day. A good day.

We're thankful for good friends, food, family and our religion. We feel so lucky and blessed this thanksgiving.  Here's hoping everybody else had a great day too.

::happy thanksgiving::

In honor of Thanksgiving today, I'm going to show you some pictures from the "Harvest Feast" at Max's school earlier this week.

It's basically a Thanksgiving party that's held the day before thanksgiving vacation.  But there are a lot of different people here in the city, and nobody wants to offend, so Harvest Feast it is!

The kids and teachers started making food for the feast at the beginning of November, and I think they made at least one different thing every week.

When I arrived at the school all the kids were outside playing on the playground. They were all being fire fighters. Max was up high on one of the slide platforms yelling, "FIRE!! FIRE!!"

The other kids came running and put his fire out. It was pretty cute.

The menu for the feast was pretty extensive:

Pretty impressive, huh?


Here's the butter and pickles. Max's teacher said that Max's class is the first class in 13 years that actually made the butter all by themselves. They made it by putting cream in a jar and shaking it. They took turns all through the day I guess. How cute!

Max was especially proud of the pickles. The kids cut up the cucumbers with those little pumpkin carving knives that aren't very sharp. I was told Max ate at least as many pieces of cucumber as he put into the jar.
The pickles turned out tasting pretty good!



Here's Max getting served some oatmeal bread. I was the helping parent the day they started working on the bread. They talked about yeast and kneading and all sorts of things. It was pretty fun.

Here we have applesauce and apple crisp.

Max had about 17 servings of apple sauce.


My plate! I especially liked the corn bread and the pumpkin bread.


The kids had decorated art for each table. I don't know if this is Max's or not, but it could be. He didn't know when I asked him. He said "Maybe I drew that." Silly.

It was so fun to get to see what the kids had been working on. We're thankful to have such a fun school here that Max loves. It's helped us all to feel more at home.

We're lucky.

>> Thanksgiving Highlights <<

My Thanksgiving post got preempted by the chin injury, so here's a quick late report on how our day went.
We got invited to breakfast at the Bhesanias. When we lived in our last house they were our across the street neighbors. They're wonderful. We had some delicious breakfast with good company. The Bhesania's daughter Amy and her husband Jason are some of our best friends out here, so it was really fun to get to hang out. Their other daughter Tina and her husband were also there along with their 6 yr old Brett. Max and Brett had an absolute blast playing together, and Brett was a really great playmate--really patient and kind to Max.
Brett and Max drinking delicious juice:
Brett, Mehroo and Max:
We played a little ping pong, and then we had to head out to our next appointment!
It took all three boys to play Amy! Next we headed out to the Biggs family thanksgiving get-together. For those of you that don't know, the Biggs family is my great-aunt on my mom's side and her family. They all live out here and it's so nice of them to always involve us in their family events!
We had a great time. Kelly came with us because Lechelle was out of town. It was really fun to get to spend time with Kelly, but we missed Lechelle!
Max really enjoyed the pin-ball machine in Aunt Jeanie's basement. It was tough to get him out of there, even for pie.
Max likes turkey!
Here's Max and his 3rd cousin (is that right mom??) Mallory. I'm afraid he might have taught her a few things her parents may not have wanted her to know--like jumping down multiple stairs at once! I love this picture though.
Later in the evening we went to have desserts with a couple from the ward. They have a 18 month old daughter who adores Max. It was really fun to relax and enjoy just getting to know them a little better. It was nice to have Kelly there too.
We had a great thanksgiving this year, although we missed all of you loved ones we didn't get to see.
We were thinking of you! And now we can say Merry Christmas!!