Too fast

I tried getting Mohamed to kiss his wife. Didn't quite get to her face. She couldn't understand what he was doing. Still cute.

Sam and Sara....my niece and nephew. Looks like Sam is getting ready to eat some pie. Is that a fork I see in his hand?

Caleb purposely getting messy while eating chocolate cream pie.

Nadia and Don and Mohamed. Just sitting around gabbing.

The kids are getting ready to play some games. Or maybe eat. I can't remember. There is Zach, Rachel, Sam, Mayah, and Sara.



Zach got hurt on the trampoline and her is Sue helping him get an ice pack.

Rachel is so proud that she licked her plate super clean.

Here is Leila (niece) with Mayah.

My nieces and nephews. Sam, Sara, Leila, and Nadia.

And best of all....LOL....my sister and I. Can we all see how much taller I am than her. I love to rub it in. I mean she is the oldest sister and I am the youngest. HEHEHEHE








Here is the Thanksgiving crowd. All ready to eat good food and enjoy fun times.

Here is the 22 pound turkey. All the other food is still being placed a little at a time to keep it hot.

The baby pictures that were used for name tags. Going across the top from left to right is Sara, Nadia, Mayah. The second row is Rachel, Caleb, Zach. The last row is Leila, Ethan and Sam. SO CUTE.

Why is it that vacations go soooo fast? We had a blast spending time at my sisters house for 4 days. My kids have so much fun with their cousins. And it is so fun to get together and play games and eat good food and enjoy great company. It has been tradition at Thanksgiving and Christmas for us to play Pinochle. It is something my parents taught us when we were young and it is something their parents taught them. It is now time for us to teach our kids so that this tradition will continue on. It is so fun. We are crazy and end up staying up way too late. I think I only went to bed at a decent hour one night. The rest were 1 and 2 a.m. CRAZY huh? It isn't as easy to stay up late anymore. My nieces have no problem doing it because they can sleep all the next day. But WE have kids. And kids get up early no matter what time they go to bed. But....so very worth the late night talks with my sister and nieces. So worth the late nights playing games. So worth the late nights just being together. It was fun. Now have to get all ready for our Christmas games.

We played games with the kids. There was a little of everything. We played Spoons, Qwich, Picturequa, Four in a row, hide and seek and Kadub (Arabic for liar). SO FUN.

I failed to post on Thanksgiving and I missed the day before I think too. But I am most grateful for family and for my Savior/gospel. There isn't anything really more important than those two things.

I will post pictures of our fun times. I can't find my camera at the moment but will have hopefully have it tomorrow and I will just add the pictures to this post.

For our Thanksgiving feast I made some homemade name tags. I got a picture of all the kids (OK I guess Nadia and Leila aren't really kids anymore. You know when you get to be 18 and 20 they make sure you know they are ADULTS now. SO I made name tags for all the kids under the age of 20. I scanned pictures of them when they were babies. I then put the pictures on some cute stripey paper and then on some construction paper. I put all the pictures on a table and they had to find which picture belonged to them. It was pretty easy for most of them. It was kind of funny when Sara grabbed Mayah's baby picture and as she was walking back to her seat she said, "I am pretty sure this is me". Then she held it up again and took it back to the table. By that time Mayah had grabbed her picture. When Sara went back and didn't see any other choices she went and sat down. You could tell she was a bit confused yet she thought there was a chance it could be her. Finally, they worked it out and everyone had their baby picture.

We also went around the room a few times and said what we were thankful for. And then played a game where one person says what they are thankful for and the next person has to start their word with the last letter in the word that came before them. For instance....if I said I am thankful for the suN then the next person would have to start their word with the letter N. The kids loved that.

Now we are all reading to think about Christmas. Caleb brought out the boxes and has already started decorating. We normally save it for the first Family Home Evening right after Thanksgiving but we let him put up one of the Nativity scenes and some of the candles and garland. The rest we will save. Don is going to put up all the outside lights and I can't wait. Last year he was overseas for business and I eneded up putting some of the lights outside but Don didn't think me getting up on a ladder when he was gone was a good idea so this year we will be able to do more lights. So fun.

Man this year has just gone so fast. I can't even believe it is close 2010. Just seems that time flies by no matter how hard I try to stop it. :)