Thanksgiving Week Recap

Well, I keep putting off typing about the crazy fun week that was Thanksgiving because for some reason my computer isn't accepting my memory card and I wanted to be able to include some pictures with my post. Oh well, here goes...
My sister Jessica and her 3 kids flew in from CA to spend a few days with us before her husband John came to town and they headed over to his mom's house. It was nice, because although I've seen her a lot recently with the mud run in CA and the sister's weekend in UT all within the past month and a half, it was nice to visit one on one. We don't get to do that too often, so I enjoyed this time together. My older 3 kids were still in school so we packed up her 3 and Ryann (that's 4 kids 5 and under) and headed out to Cafe Rio (always my favorite) and some early Christmas shopping. After the kids got home from school we hit the movies (and met up with her sis-in-law). i had heard some good things about Bee Movie and that seemed to satisfy the age range of 12 to 3yrs. I think Jacob and Evan like going to the movies simply for the popcorn and soda because they finished their ration before the previews were even over and all I hear for the next 1 1/2 hours was "Please, just a little more." When can I have more?" "Are you going to get more?" Anyways, you get the picture...ahhh, I love them, I do....really, I do! The next day we wanted to do something fun and different so we headed over to a place called Jump On It. (Again, no pictures. still waiting for Jessica to email them. Remember..."you hold the baby, I'll take the pictures..." whatever!) Jump On It is just basically a huge warehouse with wall to wall trampolines, trampolines and oh yea, more trampolines. The kids had so much fun there. i was worried when I first walked into the place that we wouldn't be able to make it the full hour that we paid for but because we were waiting for John we ended up dragging the kids away after almost 2 hours. (Jessica and I didn't make any eye contact with the front desk..."What? oh, we didn't know our time was up...) John eventually got there and showed off some of his sweet moves using Owen (their 3 yr old) for protection when he fell - still can't get that image out of my head John, thanks for the belly laughs! Jessica headed to Orem that night and the next day I spent catching up on laundry, cleaning and shopping for Thanksgiving. We had my dad, Darren's mom Carol and my sister Tracy (with her husband Joe) all join us for an awesome Thanksgiving dinner. We pulled out all the stops but I think my favorite was the sweet potato casserole that I made (almost a dessert) and the pumpkin cheesecake that Tracy made. We had leftovers that lasted most the weekend. Darren took the kids on a 3-4 hour bike ride on Friday while I cleaned and relaxed. It was quiet and peaceful for me and the kids really enjoyed the time with Darren. I'm not sure how far they rode but I had to come rescue them because they simply were too tired to make it up the hill on the return trip. They're good troopers and looked cute in their matching BYU beanie caps. (again, cute picture...) All in all it was a fun week and it was the perfect start to a wonderful holiday season. Everyone had a great week, looking forward to Christmas all the more now.