Spanksgiving 2010

I use "spanksgiving" in a very literal sense here.  We drove down to Gpa and Gma D's in Arizona for our holiday.  Gpa D is known as the spanking gpa.  (Or as "goofy gwape gwampa," a la Adam).  The kids love to run from Gpa when he tries to give them spankings.

We left the day the "Storm of the Century" was supposed to hit, and as we were headed south, we weren't too worried about it.  (Turns out we didn't need to worry about it anyway, as it barely left a skiff of snow on the ground at our house.)  We had a great time.  Good food, good family, good times, and no early morning black Friday shopping.  All the necessesaries for a great Thanksgiving holiday.

Zach with his mom, and sisters Alisa and Katie, working on the giant crossword puzzle.  When they get together, it's either a crossword or a puzzle with these four.

Adam's favorite thing to do was watch his cousin Darin play his phone.  Darin was kind enough to oblige.

A's turkey hat from playgroup.  After I instisted we take a picture with him wearing it, he was done with it forever.  Goodbye, cute turkey hat that took way too much work for a playgroup project.

Whatever time wasn't spent outside (it was cold for AZ, but it sure beat the single digits Utah was having), the kids spent in Gma's guest room watching Toy Story 3.  My kids can now watch it without running in terror from the incinerator scene.  Baby steps, people.

I:

 K:

 L, with her usual picture perma-grin:

Zach and I got to go on a date (HP 7), and we took the kids to see Tangled.  I laughed so hard at Rapunzel's mood swings from complete and utter joy to devestating guilt at leaving.  If you've seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about.  They captured the typical woman's guilt issues pretty well, if you ask me.  We left Sunday morning and hit stormy weather just past St. George.  The nail-biting, head-banging 10 miles-per-hour drive to Cedar City left us a little anxious about just how long it would take us to get home.  13 hours compared to the normal 10, but with the blessing of a safe trip.  We were so thankful.  Still, when Lucy asked me if we'd be going down again this winter approximately 15 minutes after we got home, I told her she'd need to give my rear-ierre a little time to recover from the trip before I'd even consider it.  (AZ in February is very tempting, however, so who knows?)