Thanksgiving Twenty Eleven

Brock and I ventured down to Utah for the long weekend to spend Thanksgiving with my side. We left early early Thanksgiving morning and booked it for our 1:00 dinner. Luckily, my family is always about a half hour behind so we were right on time. Dinner was awesome and very tasty. Since my extended family is so large, we meet at my Granny's church and spend the afternoon with all my Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Parents, Siblings and of course my Grandma. It's always fun to catch up with everyone and spend time together. Although, I did NOT eat pie on Thanksgiving because I was doing dishes...lame!

My mom, sisters and I always do the Black Friday shopping and we have since I was a teen. After shopping we spend the night in a hotel together and wrap our gifts. It's a really fun tradition and I only get to do it every other year so I always really look forward to it. However, this year was weird because we were not game to start our shopping at midnight like all the stores were doing. Most of us just got up at our normal time (3:30) to hit the 5:00am sales. When we got to the first store the place was a ghost town! IT WAS so weird. Obviously most of the good sales were over but we got a few grabs. It was nice not to have to stand in long lines, bump into crazy people or feel your blood pressure rise but it was kinda a let down too. It just felt like regular shopping but I'd rather do that than stay up all night. I was exhausted all day as it was, which I blame on not starting our morning with an adrenaline rush running to get a cart. Ha! It was fun and I got some good grabs and I am pretty much done with my Christmas shopping!

Later on Friday, my sister-in-law Heather and my cute little niece met up with us to do some shopping. I was cracking up the whole time because my niece has to push her own cart through the store with no help. It was hilarious seeing a little person maneuvering a full size cart. She did awesome and didn't run into anything!



While we were shopping Brock went with a couple of my brothers, my dad and a few of my nieces to go ride wheelers out by Utah Lake. The ride went well and was fun but ended crappy. My dad tipped his wheeler while he was loading it into his truck. He got it all the way to the top and it lost balance and flipped him backwards and he landed on his back with the machine on top of him. Luckily, Brock was there to push the machine off of Dad, so he wasn't stuck under it.
 They took him to the ER and he has a broken hand, sprained wrist, 3 fractured ribs, cuts on his chin, bumps and bruises. He is in a lot of pain and it's going to take time to get recovered. However, he was blessed to not have any back, neck or head injuries. Brock said he's never seen anyone hit the ground that hard and that the machine bounced off him. Brock took really good care of my Dad until my mom got there- I'm grateful I married a good caring person.
 My Dad was pretty high on pain meds when we saw him and he was in good spirits and hilarious. He was cracking jokes like crazy and he had us all rolling on floor. He kept saying that Brock is his hero, hahahaha. I'm bummed that that happened but I'm glad he's "okay".

Dad let me bundle him up on the couch for the night:)

Family Pictures 2011

 

Thanks Halz:)

River Trip

Brock and I made an overnight run to the Salmon River to fish! We left after work Friday and 4 hours later we were pitching our tent in the dark on the river. Yes, we used our tent that we swore we would never use again but it worked out great. I actually stayed really warm and slept really well.
Brock and I wanted to be some of the first ones on the river so we were up before the sun was up packing up "camp" and getting the drift boat ready to launch. We were indeed the first ones on the river, in fact we launched in the dark and sat on the river anchored until it was light enough to move on down the river.
We spent the entire day on the river. I was cold at times but we had our buddy heater on the boat with us to keep us warm. In the afternoon the sun was shinning and it was a really beautiful and warmish day.
We fished from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm and left the river with out even a bite! There were so many people on the river and it appeared to be a slow day for everyone. We only saw maybe 4 fish caught the entire day. I'm not sure why the steelheadn' was slow but it appears to have been a slow fishing season on the salmon altogether.
It was nice to be out on the river while enjoying nature.

Brock fishing off the bank

Brock is the best! He totally brought the heater to keep me warm.

Fall Colors

I love everything about Autumn, the food, the smells and the colors. Brock and I have a tradition to go on a drive every fall to look at the fall colors. The fall colors were so vibrant this year and the weather was so nice, we didn't even get snow until November.

Reba twice in one year= the best year ever!

The best thing happened to me this year....I saw REBA in concert twice!

As you may or may not know Reba is FINALLY touring again! She took several years off to peruse her acting career and performed in "Annie Get Your Gun" and also starred in her show "Reba".

My sister and I have always gone together to see Reba in concert, in fact one of my first concerts was a Reba concert that Nette took me to. Our last Reba concert together was in 2001 in SLC, which was Reba's last year touring. (I think)

Anyway, we were "over the moon" to learn that Reba was touring again and coming to SLC with George Strait! We didn't hesitate to buy our tickets and I didn't mind that I was going to have to drive 7 hours for the concert. I thought that for sure it would be the LAST time for a LONG time that we would have the opportunity. So, I went to Utah and the concert was amazing and we were star struck by Reba and her amazingness.  (George was pretty awesome himself but that goes with out saying...right?)

In JUNE...to my great astonishment...I saw REBA on the calendar for MSU's concert schedule. So of course we bought our tickets and Nette came here and we partook in Reba's limelight. She totally still rocks it and is a lot of fun to watch. Her encore was of course "Fancy" and she obviously rocked it! She came on tour with "The Band Perry" and they were okay and fun to watch.

Anyhoo...here are some pics from the October concert!

Band Perry

Band Perry-I love that she plays the guitar!

Reba

Reba singing "Fancy"-note the red dress!

OuR sPoOkY dInNeR

My mom and sister & her kids came to visit last weekend and while they were here I put on a Spooky Dinner for them. I did a Night for Witches & Wizards and each of us had a Witch or Wizard name and we all dressed up.
For dinner we had Monster Guts (Baked Spaghetti Lasagna), Bug Salad (salad with craisins), Mummy Bones (Bread sticks), and Dracula's Blood Clots (Jello with raspberries). For dessert we had Unicorn Eyeballs and Frankenstein Brains. For our beverages we had Spider Venom (root beer), Rotten Apple Cider and Ghost Juice (water).
We had so much fun together and the food was actually really yummy! (Thanks to Brock, he actually made the main dish for me).


Our Witch & Warlock names: 
Brock: Artoro Spiderguts
Kim: Lucinda Cobweb
Mom: Gwendolyn Mummybones
Nette: Isadora Grave-Robber
Brans: Walden Gory-Ghoul
Brin: Marigold Broomstick

Our Invitations

My spooky Witch stuff. We had brains, rats, Frankenstein blood, spiders, shrunken heads and many other spooky objects!

Rotten Apple Cider

Monster Guts

Walden & Marigold

Unicorn Eyeball

Frankenstein Brains

 It was a lot of fun but also a lot of work! Who knows if I will do that again:)

Random Halloween Stuff and fall colors....