Thanksgiving was very low key for us here in Cheyenne. Stewart was suppose to work on Thanksgiving day in the hospital so I had originally cancelled the holiday for us since it would have been just Sophie and me here at home. Well after Stewarts' recent stay in the hospital as a patient his schedule changed and he ended up being home for Thanksgiving.  So our plans changed and we ended up doing something for the holiday, but it was not much.

We had a simple meal of Chicken, stove top stuffing, green beans, and of course mashed potatoes. Before and after our meal we read books, did craft projects, watched a movie, some of us took a few naps, and played games with Sophie.  In the evening we went to Karl and Marci Linde’s home to spend a few hours playing games with their family (I nanny for the Lindie family two days a week, they are a wonderful family). We played a game of Headbands, Left, Right or Center, and a card game called of 31. We also had the Apple crumble pie I made and yummy cookies they made. It was fun to get out of the house and visit, so we are grateful for their kind offer to have us over.  

Since it snowed most of Thanksgiving here, we decided to take our sleds out for a test run on Black Friday while everyone was shopping. We had a great time! It is fun to see Sophie become a little more adventurous and go by herself down the hill. The wind was a little cold so we did not stay outside to long before we felt it was time to head home.

On Saturday, we decided to go sledding again since the wind had died down and it was a little warmer outside. We again had a lot of fun and enjoyed our time together as a family. That evening we went to Cheyenne’s annual Christmas light parade at 5:30pm. It was soooooo cold outside (it was about 3 degrees with a wind chill on top of it)! We dressed Sophie up in her warm winter gear even her snow pants to make sure she stayed warm. Stewart and I did not have warm winter gear like Sophie so we just dressed as warm as we could before we went.  We lasted an hour before all three of us decided we did not care to see the rest of the parade because we were chilled to the bone.  

When we got back to our car our key fob was too cold to work so we unlocked our car with our key the old fashioned way and our car alarm went berserk! We could not for the life of us get our car alarm to turn off. So we loaded ourselves up and drove away, with the alarm blaring as we went. Once we got down the road a block or two the alarm turned off and we thought all was well… wrong! Once we were home the alarm went off again, so not knowing what else to do Stewart helped Sophie and me into the house and then he took the car outside of town to figure out how to turn the alarm off.  I immediately got on the internet and searched for help… I learned there are a lot of Honda vehicles that have alarms that can be crazy at times, so I found lots of helpful advice. My search yielded the idea of locking our doors and shutting them and then using the key again to open the doors, so I told Stewart to give it a try and IT WORKED! Crazy I know unlocking the doors with the key was the whole reason we ended up in that mess. Anyway, after all that excitement Stewart came home and we all warmed up with soup and hot chocolate. Glad to have had fun at the parade and the whole alarm issue behind us.

On Monday after Thanksgiving we had our annual FHE where we decorate our Christmas tree. Words will never be able to tell you how excited Sophie was to decorate the tree this year. She was so bubbly and fun to watch as I handed out the ornaments to put on the tree. Afterwards I had to thin out her ornaments in areas filling in holes and taking ornaments off tree limbs where she had hung two or three.  But in the end our tree with mismatched sentimental ornaments still fills my heart with Christmas joy. I hope we will remember the true reason we celebrate Christmas in all that we do. 

Each year at the beginning of November I put up my homemade tree I cut out of felt. Our goal is a to write something we are thankful for on the banner and put up a leaf on the tree that represents what we are thankful for that day. This year as I watched out tree fill out with leaves, I could not help to be thankful for my family and the tender love we share. We are so blessed. 

last week Stewart decided to do some research on how the hospital here in Cheyenne treated their patients by going undercover as a real patient. Really Stewart was admitted to the hospital here on Tuesday, November, 10th due to complications of his Crohn's disease. Today we are blessed he is doing better but it will be an adjustment trying to figure out yet again another new diet plan for him, so that he can be as healthy as possible. Below is a blog post Stewart wrote about his experiences,  I thought it was easier and best just to cut and copy his words here rather than trying to re-write the whole experience. 

Stewart's post:

Well, as expected I've spent a lot of time at the hospital this month. But unexpectedly I spent 3 of those days in the hospital as a patient. I had a bad day on Monday ( a week ago), couldn't eat or drink much due to stomach pain. The pain continued throughout the night and awakened me several times. I went to work Tuesday morning, feeling only marginally better. By 6:15 am I was feeling significantly worse, the pain in my stomach had escalated quite a bit and I asked a colleague to wheelchair me down to the ED. Luckily we were close because the pain was severe! Within a few hours they had determined that I had a small bowel obstruction (probably from the Crohn's) and I was admitted to the hospital. Within about 24hr it looked like I wouldn't need surgery, that my bowels would wake up with medications. I am home now, eating a very soft, calorie and protein-rich diet. Now that I'm counting calories I realize how under-nourished I was for weeks. I'm having a hard time getting all my calories in, and I'm supplementing everything with whipping cream, olive oil, extra butter, etc. 

Becky has successfully tweaked her diet to be able to lose weight, and now with me doing everything I can to gain weight, it makes eating at our house a bit tricky.

Sophie didn't really know how to act at the hospital, so I guess when in doubt, be Crazy!

We took Family Photos a few weeks ago, I think they turned out okay but I messed up and they turned out pixelated... so not the best quality. I used my new camera and borrowed a friend’s timer and her tripod so I wouldn’t have to beg someone to take our pictures. Stewart and Sophie are not as enthusiastic about taking family pictures as I am, so they told me I only had one hour to take family pictures and because I did not have any other choice I had to agree with their demands. I don’t think they turned out fantastic, but they will work for the purpose of capturing what our family looked like in the year 2015 for posterity sake. I am convinced that one day someone will be grateful I made them take family photos every year, until then I will keep doing what I need to do to make sure we get a family picture session in each year. 

And of course a few silly ones just for fun:

For our FHE activity on Monday before Halloween we carved our pumpkins. Sophie even scooped out her pumpkin guts this year which was a big deal, last year she was grossed out by them and would not touch them. We also gave her a carving knife, the kind you can buy that comes in the pumpkin carving kit, and she carved out her pumpkins face by herself with minimal help from Stewart or me. We had a fun time and I think they turned out spectacular.   

The night before Halloween I made our traditional Halloween spooky meal of: mummy dogs, ghost potatoes, eye ball cheese, pumpkin orange, troll fingers (olives), and squash because that is just scary without a name. We watched Hotel Transylvania while we ate, again another family Halloween tradition in our home. It was a fun night for a "scary" movie and a spooky meal.

On Halloween our ward hosted a chili and cornbread dinner and then a trunk or treat for the kids afterwards. We had fun dressing up ourselves and our car in a pirate theme recycling as much of Sophie’s birthday party stuff as we could. Sophie wanted to be Izzy the pirate from Disney’s Jake and the Neverland Pirates TV show and so Stewart and I dressed up as Jake and Cubby from the show as well to keep with her theme. We also completed out pirate team by borrowing a friend’s baby and dressing him up as the Skully the parrot on the show.  We had a fun time and I think our costumes while simple turned out awesome.

Since we were at a Trunk or Treat we decorated out car in a pirate theme. We brought the plank from Sophie’s birthday party and set it up so the kids had to walk the plank across the alligator pond to trick or treat at our car and our candy box was a treasure chest. That was it, so easy and the kids loved it!

Of course Sophie made got a lot of candy in my opinion, but really compared to most other kids she did not get all that much candy, enough to enjoy and share with us but yet not enough to overwhelm us. In the end we had a nice Halloween just being together as a family.