A Time of Giving Thanks

Things I am thankful for.....

Having a family I love spending special times with.

A husband who leads our home with spiritual guidance,

love and laughter.

A mother who teaches by example.

Sons who bring so much happiness into my life.

The radiant smile of this beautiful daughter of mine.

The excitement and life of these four young children.

I can't imagine living a life without children.

True, you would certainly avoid the heartaches

and disappointments; but you would never be able

to experience the true feelings of unconditional love

either. There is nothing more fulfilling than being

hugged by a child.

I am thankful I have been blessed with children.

Our Thanksgiving Day

MMMmmm......this is my favorite way of cooking the turkey.

Have you all tried deep frying?

Wednesday night I melted butter, added all of my spices and seasonings and then injected them and rubbed it into the turkey really well and let

it set in the refrigerator over night.

Thursday, I made sure the skin was cut away well

around the neck so the hot oil could rotate around

and through that bird as it cooked. I halved an onion

and placed it in the basket with the turkey to give it

a little more flavor and then I just waited for that turkey to be done.

HAVE ANY OF YOU SEEN THE MOVIE CHRISTMAS VACATION?

Do you know the part where they bring the turkey to the table and

Chevy Chase cuts into it and it just explodes and lies there all

dried up? And then there's the scene where Chevy Chase is trying

to chew it?

That's what MY TURKEY turned out to be!

Thankfully everything else turned out beautifully

so we were able to enjoy the rest of the food.

It even turned out if you put enough of mother's

delicious cream gravy on the turkey you

could swallow a few bites of it as long as

you didn't get the ones that were so crispy they

scratched your throat all the way down.

Here's Kyle and Amy enjoying their dinner.

After dinner we enjoyed all of the delicious desserts Natalie brought.

Fudge, banana cream pie, cheese cake & chocolate cream pie.

Sabrina and Amy brought pumpkin pies so we had plenty to choose from

While some people ate dessert, others of us were busy building

graham cracker houses and decorating them.

Here's Natalie's complicated masterpiece.

Sabrina, Mother and I were busy helping with the

construction of Kayley, Katelyn, Cameron and Hannah's houses.

Kacey and JJ were creative and made a cute camera.

This picture doesn't show it off but it had the lens, the

wrist strap, the button on top and other cute and clever

little creations.

This is Elder Urbanik from Price, Utah - can you guess what he made?

It's a missionary. White shirt, tie, missionary tag and scriptures.

The bottom part looks like a skirt in this picture but it

was actually pants.

I thought his was very creative as well.

Here are Cameron's, Kayley's, Katelyn's and Hannah's finished products.

I think we all really enjoyed using our creative talents on

something as important as graham cracker houses but boy

did we make a mess.

Sarah's not the only one that has a Cinderella.

We have our very own Cinder-fella!

Check it out....

After he finished everybody packed up and headed for home.

At the end of the day Mike and I both commented on

what an enjoyable day it had been;

It really was.

Young Womens Evening of Excellence

I was sitting here admiring the beautiful colors Becky

has posted on her site and it hit me that I had my very

own burst of color photo's.

Tuesday night our Y/W had their Evening of Excellence.

Amanda - the one on the right planned the program

titled: You Are Unique.

As you will see it was based on different types of shoes

and the use of each shoe.

She put the use of the individual shoe with a unique tie-in

of a gospel standard.

Example: Red glitter platform shoes represented -

"Just as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz wanted

to go home, we are all striving to return home to

our Heavenly Father".

She collected tennis shoes, ballet shoes, work boots, etc. and

they all had a unique tie-in. A lot of work on her part, but

it turned out to be very effective. She is very talented.

Kathy, the one on the left designed and placed each Y/W value

on the tiles you see on each table; as well as the little flags

with the Y/W symbol that the miniture shoes are sitting on.

She is extremely talented.

Alynne, the one between me and Amanda made the tablecloths

that represented each value in color. She is extremely talented as well.

Are you wondering what I did and where my talent lies in all this?

I'll tell you when you reach it in the pictues.

Here it is!

This is my contribution to the evening and the many talents that were

put to use.

It's the 'shoe' cake server!

Oh, and the shoe boxes that were wrapped. I did those too.

Alynne must have thought I had a lot to offer when she

chose me to be her counselor. I feel very inadequate when I am

around all of these talented women. They sure are a lot of fun

to work with though. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something from

them before it all comes to an end.

S'Mores Anyone????

Saturday, November 15th began as a beautiful

morning with blue skies, but warm temperatures.

I headed down to the ward building for a

Super Saturday of crafts and food.

BUT as I headed down the hill I saw the smoke

I had smelt as I left the house.

The following pictues are the account

of how bad things got as the day wore on.

Around 12:00 p.m. - my street.

3:00 p.m. - driving S/E on Nohl Ranch Rd. 3:00 -4:00 p.m. - my street

5:00 p.m.

Helicopters dipping water from the resevoir

Looking west as the sun begins to set

By this time I had a basket full of clothes,

important papers and my portable safe

out and ready to grab if we had to evacuate.

I walked out the front door around 8:00 p.m

and was able to see this red glow from across

the freeway. Out of all the fires we've been

through, this was the first one that

really put me on edge.

After a sleepless night, we arose to beautiful

blue skies, but still a lot of smoke to the north.

After spending all Saturday afternoon and night in

the house Mike and I had to get out and find out

what had happened in our neighborhood. So we

jumped in the car a drove east and then south

to check things out.

The picture below was taken toward the east end of

Santa Ana Canyon Road looking west.

That's the 91 freeway on the right.

This is looking northwest toward Brea/La Habra Heights.

This picture was taken around 9:00 a.m.

We were at the point above Hannah's school looking

north. I believe this was when Diamond Bar

began burning.

This vulture may have been looking for a crispy morsel.

And here's the view looking down toward our house.

At the bottom of the picture you can see the big, light

orange house in the center - ours is the little grey one

to the left. Looks like pretty clean air at our house!

And here's a view of Catalina. You definately would

not have wanted to be on the water. The smoke

was covering it like a blanket.

And that's my photo journal of the Yorba Linda/Anaheim Hills fire.

The bishop of Yorba Linda 4th ward lost his home.

The Mia Maid advisor in our Young Women program lost her home.

There may be others that I don't know about but all in all I

feel we were extremely blessed considering how fierce these fires

were and how thinly stretched the fire fighters were.

But what a valiant battle they fought. I cannot express

the appreciation I have for these men/women who put

themselves in harms way to protect the properties and lives

of our communities.

To me they truely are HEROES and I thank them.

Birthdays

To those of you whom occasionally view my blog you are now in for a treat! Or maybe you will view it as 'just more pictures of the same ol' people'. I titled this post "Birthdays" becuase we have had

three birthdays in the family since my last post and

I have been too busy being a politcal activist to think

about blogging. By the time 9:00 p.m. rolled around

I was ready for my head to hit the pillow and couldn't think about doing anything else but what had to be done for my family before I was able to think about going to bed.

September 29 was Bryce's birthday. We all went to the

Orange County Mining Company and enjoyed our dinner and

the beautiful view that overlooks the city of Orange.

Katelyn's birthday was October 23. We went to Bryce and Sabrina's house and enjoyed her

birthday with family and friends from school and church.

I thought she was the cutest Tinkerbell I have ever seen.

This cake was so beautifully decorated that the kids couldn't resist coming up and sneaking a pinch of frosting.

Cameron got into trouble (not a big surprise) so when

he was finished sitting in the corner I gave him my camera

so he could snap a few pictures, and this is what he came up with.

Now we're to Hannah's birthday party -

Hannah's Hollywood Night.

This is a picture of the star Hannah had

on the "Red Carpet". The pictures below

are of the various "Hollywood Celebrities"

standing on their stars.

Give a girl a micraphone and she tends to lose

all of her inhabitions.

This was the part where the different groups

of "stars" came up and gave their acceptance

speeches for the awards they received in making

their group movies.

Here they are holding up their little (very little) Oscar statues.

This is the end of my birthday post. You can probably be thankful

it didn't go on any longer. It could have, but I got halfway through

the party before I discovered I hadn't replaced the USB card

in my camera; so most of these pictures are from Mother's camera.

Thankfully she was here taking pictures or I would have had nothing!