Done and DONE!

Can you hear it? Listen VERY carefully...that my friends is the sound of 50,000 words bowing down before me in defeat. I did it. I DID IT!!!!! 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo! Excuse me a moment while I celebrate! WOOT! WOOT! WOOT! Wow. I really did not think I would get it done, but I did and I look forward to a fancy dinner that I do not have to pay for. Hee hee hee!
However, now comes the hard part: Editing the dang thing and actually finding the self-control to sit down and finish it without a deadline looming.
That will come, but not today. Today is a time to look back at (what I might argue as) the best Thanksgiving ever!
We celebrated Thanksgiving up at the farm in Idaho with TONS of amazing family and friends. Everything was perfect.

Here's the aftermath of the big dinner:

(Yes, that is Father ASLEEP on the floor after dinner. He fried us two AMAZING Cajun turkeys. Sadly the leftovers disappeared soon after.)

Once the food had settled we carried on the traditional Turkey Shoot.
It's quite a simple concept. Draw/paint a turkey on a sturdy piece of cardboard, (Many thanks to Nick for the amazing artwork!), have one brave soul run around the yard, arm everyone with paintball guns and have at it!

Even Grandma got into the Thanksgiving spirit!

The Absolute BEST part of the day was when someone's children decided to take revenge and cross the safety line while shooting their guns! The paintballs went right THROUGH the cardboard! HA HA HA! Everyone was falling on the lawn laughing! We are such a nice family! (And if you listen closely you can hear the "OW!")


Another highlight of this fabulous time together was the Just Dance party with all the cousins.
Meg tore this dance up!


And Greg was a BEAST!


Of course there were many MANY leftovers

And everyone helped decorate Grandma's awesome BYU tree

Don't forget about football!

AND shooting for REAL! (no turkeys involved this time. I ALMOST hit the exact middle of the target. A complete accident of course, but still, pretty dang cool!)

And that's what happened over Thanksgiving.

Free Pie Night!

So the Village Inn serves up free pie every Wednesday night if you buy something from the menu. Meg, Meredith, and I HAD to check it out!

Making Promises I Might Not Be Able to Keep and Vegas, Baby!

I agreed to take on the NaNoWriMo challenge this year with Tuima, Eredolyn, and a few other friends. However, I was under the impression that NaNoWriMo required only 20,000 words in order to declare yourself champion. So agreeing to pay for dinner at The Chef's Table if I failed to make this goal seemed easy enough. I agreed to the deal only to find out moments later that NaNoWriMo requires 50,000 words, not 20,000! So I'm getting my rear in gear and trying to write a little everyday. The hard part (For me at least) is that the whole point of NaNoWriMo is writing. Just sitting down and writing your 50,000 words. This means NO EDITING. Just barrel through your writer's block and keep writing. My inner editor is writhing in agony at some of the junk I am coming up with and consequently ignoring. What keeps me going is at the end of Novemeber I will let her loose and she can have her way with the words I've typed.
I'm on a tight writing schedule since I lost a weekend due to a Vegas trip-but SO worth it. I will also lose next weekend due to another road trip (Portland, WA this time and then over Thanksgiving weekend when I leave for Idaho.) This is going to be interesting!
I headed down to Vegas with the family to celebrate a cousin's baptism. She looked BEAUTIFUL! Here are some highlights of the trip!

Our traveling fellows.

Snacks are a must!

Mikelle being all college-y and working on a paper at 10:00 at night in the car.

Doesn't she look beautiful?

FOOD COMA!

A BUNDLE of energy! I only got him to sit still enough to flash the photo!

The whole family posing for pictures.

We also made it to the Las Vegas Temple. Seriously one of the most beautiful temples I've ever seen. It's GIGANTIC!

We went to the Bellagio that night to see the sights. I LOVE their garden room! Perfect for Thanksgiving.

These flower pumpkins were my favorites! I believe this one was made of carnations.

LOVE the rose pumpkin. They were HUGE!

Me and Grandma!

A talking tree (with the lovely flower pumpkins in the background!)

3-D artwork! So cool!

The ceiling at the Bellagio! Glass artwork! I could have stared at it all night!

A quick trip to Paris never hurt anyone!

KISSY KISSY!!!!!!

Making our way to the Strip!

Our view! And finally, the Bellagio Water Fountain! SO pretty! Here's a video of the one we watched up front!

All in all we had a fabulous time and were sad to leave. Good thing Thanksgiving is just around the corner where we'll all get together again! Until then!

Halloween recaps!

I ALMOST got this posted back in October, but SO many things happened! (Celebrating Halloween all weekend long for one, then the start of NaNoWriMo and a quick trip to Vegas for one thing!) So, I'll catch you up on all those, but we'll start with Halloween.
First of all, NO ONE (save for Nan and Eredolyn) knew who I was! Amy Pond people! Come ON! I guess I need to hang out with nerdier people like myself.

For you non-nerds out there, Amy Pond is a character from the British TV show Doctor Who. In one episode they run into aliens that make you forget you've seen them, which is why Amy, Rory, River, and the Doctor carry around sharpie markers, making tallies when they see the aliens. The aliens are called The Silence, and are said to be the scariest aliens of all time on Doctor Who, but I think the Weeping Angels are FAR more terrifying. Rumor was there was one wandering around Provo on Halloween, but we couldn't find it. (Which, all things considered, was probably a good thing! Here's a clip from the episode with the Weeping Angels if you're interested: Don't Blink.)
Ere and I hung out and she looked great in her steam punk costume as well! We also ran into someone dressed as River Song and they kindly let me pose with their sonic screwdriver! It was a fabulous evening.

The other awesome thing I did for Halloween was go to the Haunted Village at This is the Place Monument. This is the ONLY haunted house/village/forest/corn maze thing I will visit since I HATE being scared. Don't get me wrong, it's still scary, but you go, you get scared and you go home. End of story. There's no lingering scare once you leave which is what I love. Resolution. Closure. It's what I do.
The setup was different than last owing to the fact that there was a story line of a grave robber wandering around with terrified village people looking for him. Oh, and I vastly improved since last year. I think I left Ere behind three or four times the year before, too scared to stay behind as the actors chased after us and tried to corner us. I'd turn tail and run, leaving Ere behind to deal with them. This year I did not leave her once, but I may have used her as a human shield at one point. :) Someone jumped down from the ceiling (FOR REAL!) and I instinctively grabbed Ere and pulled her in front of me. Sorry!

Because Things That Are Cannot Be.

It all started with a simple idea. A simple, fanciful idea. Oktoberfest in Snowbird. What could be better than people running around in lederhosen and oom-pa-pahing on their German instruments while sampling tasty food? The idea appealed to both Eredolyn and I and we decided to check out this delightful cultural festival.
The morning dawned bright and clear as we set off, driving up the Little Cottonwood canyon. It was like stepping through a doorway into a whole new world. During the drive we found ourselves transported into a Narnian winter. (Or a Middle-Earth winter, whichever you prefer.)

After much ooh-ing and ahh-ing and praying that Eredolyn's car would make it up the mountain we arrived at the front gates of Oktoberfest and quickly snapped a festive picture:

Aaaaaaaaaaand that was as far as we got. Turns out there was a BOMB threat that day and they'd evacuated everyone to safety...a few feet away outside the banner. We waited and waited and WAITED. We tried to check out the lodge, but were kicked out only a few minutes later due to the pending danger. We talked to one of the musicians, who came with his own set of lederhosen. He was feeling a bit peeved as his instruments were behind the line of safety on the stage. He was hoping the bomb wouldn't detonate before he got them back. (Note of interest: He totally looked like Andy from The Office!)
We listened in to a few other conversations because we could. One family was trying to reach the rest of their group on the other side of the mountain and weren't having much success. The festive atmosphere was a bust.
However, we did perk up when the festival staff soon started bringing out tents and even built a fire in a convenient barrel. Ere and I marveled at how hospitable they were being, but also thought it was about ruddy time. Turns out the tent and the fire were reserved for the media only.
Thanks, Snowbird. Thanks.
We soon turned tail and left, braving our way back down the mountain and wondering all the while as to who would threaten a jolly day like Oktoberfest. (We deduced that it must be someone who hated fun.)
Not to be deterred from a day of cultural discoveries we visited the La Caille restaurant on a spur-of-the-moment decision.

(That blurry thing in the background is a peacock. SOMEONE wouldn't slow down enough and also my camera wouldn't focus on the dang bird. They roam wild on the restaurant grounds. Too COOL!)

(The swan wasn't being cooperative so Ere gave a quick honk of her horn and he perked right up.)

(Whut?)

We also hit a bakery, Down East and Starbucks. Moral of this story? Don't be a jerk and threaten Oktoberfest. But if you do, just know that we still had a great day. Neener neener neener.