Party On

Audrey and Luke each had class holiday parties at school, and I was able to go to each.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures at Luke's, but we had fun.  I was in charge of bringing some type of fruit, but Luke was disappointed that we weren't bringing a "treat".  So, we made fruit kabobs out of red and green fruits.  I thought it was pretty cool, but Luke thought it was just "okay".  I noticed he didn't even eat one at the party.  Stinker.

At Audrey's party, the class sang some songs, and then we had cookies and milk.  She did a great job performing.  Her teachers, Ms. Pat and Ms. Sally, are so sweet.

We were also able to go to Clayton's work party this year, as it was a family party.  It was tons of fun, with great food and lots of music and dancing.  The kids ate it up (the music and dancing, I mean), especially Audrey and Max.  Then, Santa came and handed out gifts.  Luke and Audrey each got to sit on his lap as well.  I wish we had more pictures of the kids dancing, but they all ended up blurry.  You have to check out the video of Max, though.

Family Pictures

You probably already saw way too many pictures of us on our Christmas card, but here are a bunch just in case you want more!  By the way, we are all wearing about 5 layers, since it was freezing cold but I didn't want pictures with coats.  Poor Max was pretty cold and grumpy, so we were lucky to get any decent ones with him.

A Second Ozark Honeymoon and Big News!

Clayton has been doing lots of job interviews all over the midwest, and he invited me along on one to Little Rock, Arkansas.  The job sounded really, really good, but he wanted me to scope out the city and see if it would be a good fit for our family.  We joked that this was our second honeymoon, as our first was not far from there near the Missouri/Arkansas border also at Christmas-time.  My mom was extremely nice to come and stay with our kids for several days, especially since she had just been to visit us for Thanksgiving.  Clayton and I had a really nice time, and the hospital put us up in the Peabody Hotel downtown.  Every morning and evening they have the walking of the ducks out to the atrium fountain and then back up the elevator to their room at night.  I had actually seen this on t.v. once, and so I was happily surprised to see it in person.  We visited several wards on Sunday, Clayton interviewed, I went around with a realtor for an entire day, and we had a very fun dinner with some of the physicians and their wives.  Overall, things went very well, and we were expecting to live there the following summer.  

At the airport on Tuesday morning, we got a phone call from a hospital in Springfield, Missouri (where I'm from), that they had a position available and wanted to interview Clayton right away.  After rescuing my sweet mom from the kiddos, we went home, and Clayton ended up doing two interviews that next weekend - one in St. Louis and one in Springfield.  He called to tell me that he had accepted the job in Springfield, and we are super excited!  We had pretty much given up hope that it was even an option, so it was quite a wonderful surprise.  The job promises to be wonderful, and we can hardly believe this journey to a "real" job is almost over!

Giving Thanks

We were so excited to have my parents and brother, Alex, come to our house for Thanksgiving weekend!  They came into town Wednesday night, and the festivities started bright and early Thursday morning with the men going to play football.  Clayton got called into work right away, which was a bummer, but my dad and Alex must have had at least a little bit of fun judging from the muddiness of their clothes.  Then, we met some friends at a park for our own little 5K run, and it was lots of fun.  We even had t-shirts and medals.  Luke and Audrey rode their bikes, but everyone finished!  Alex, of course, was the winner.  After hot chocolate, muffins, and the distribution of medals, we went back home to cook up a feast.  I, of course, could not pass up this great opportunity to try out lots of new recipes, and luckily almost all of them were awesome.  I wish I had taken some pictures of the spread, but I guess we were having too much fun to worry about pictures.  And best of all, Clayton got home just in time to eat with us.  The rest of the weekend, we played games, ate more food, dragged my fam to work out with us at the gym, and visited the Henry Ford Museum.  We saw a really neat lego display of a city, which was pretty amazing, and the kids had lots of fun at the interactive Wizard of Oz area.  We also worked together on an assembly line to put together Model T's and designed and tested our own airplane models.   

We are so thankful for family, friends, our faith, and all the bounteous blessings we have been given this year.  

Happy Thanksgiving!

Fall Leaves