Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has been an awesome adventure! Jake and I were planning on going to Arizona for Thanksgiving and leaving Wednesday to go there, but he got home early from work Tuesday night, so we left to Arizona then! We started our trip off by eating at Jasons Deli!

The drive started off beautiful and was so nice out! We got into Arizona around 4am and expected everyone to sleep. My dad was so excited we were coming, he had stayed up to say hello to us! We all had fun talking for a few hours and went to bed around 6:30 :) I LOVE being home!

Wednesday was a great day! We woke up in the afternoon and went to go see my Amber and John downstairs! They were there with their two cute boys! We all decided to get ready and go get some food at one of our all time favorite places, Native New Yorker! It is the best chicken wing place ever!

We got a lot of wings! Our favorite flavors of wings there are Hot, and Honey Hot. It was fun to be with mom, Amber, John, Bryce, Brandon and Jake.

Jake wanted to order a couple of Suicide Hot wings. I tried one and it wasn't so bad at first, but then my lips were on fire. Overall it wasn't as hot as I expected, but I didn't like the flavor of it. It tasted like black pepper and I didn't like that. I really did enjoy the rest of my wings and had fun eating those!

When we got home my sister Aubrey and her husband David had arrived! Mom was so sweet and made us dinner of one of my all time favorite meals....Hawaiian Haystacks! My mom is amazing at cooking them! While she was making dinner, Jake and I played with Aubrey's kids Shane and Alyssa. Alyssa and I found this big puppet lamb chop and I was so excited because she matched my little lamb chop! So, Alyssa and I had fun playing lamb chop!

 Aubrey getting some haystacks! Oh delicious!!

 For desert we had cookies and ice cream.

After the kids went home to go to bed, Mom, Amber, John, Jake and I played Five Crowns. This was Johns first time playing and he did great! Mom creamed us! She almost won with 3 points, but got 26 and still beat us all big time! I love playing Five Crowns! It is so addicting, I dream about it.

After the game, Amber, Jake and I had a fun late night Walmart adventure! (my favorite!) Jake found this cool dino pillow peewee pet, and I got a new Beauty and the Beast Christmas movie! Amber and I were looking for some bags to put our crafts in when people bought them at our up coming boutique on Saturday! We both forgot to bring some home to Arizona with us!

Happy Thanksgiving! Thursday morning, Mom, Jake and I woke up early and headed to Usury Park to go do a hike called the Windcaves! When we got there, we realized we all forgot our wallets and couldn't pay the park entrance fee of $6.00. So we parked outside Usury and walked a mile and a half to the trail head. I was actually really glad we had that walk because we got to see some beautiful scenery! Jake was going crazy taking tons of pictures! This is his first real cacti encounter! He has seen some, but not a huge dessert scene. Arizona really is breath taking.

Tuna wanted to sit on a cactus. He said it didn't hurt to bad.

On our walk to the trail head.

We made it! Time to now start our hike!

View from the top of the wind caves.

My cute mom and I. I LOVE hanging out with her! She is so much fun!

Inside a wind cave.

Relaxing and having fun resting at the top of the mountain.

Jake really loving the cactus. On our way down, we saw an old high school friend Beau Pomeroy. That was fun and I got to meet his new cute wife. Also on our way down we got to talk to a park ranger. We told him how much we were loving it here, so he gave us a pamphlet of all the months events going on! It was awesome! I really want to go back and do "moonlight flashlight walk," "story time in the dessert," "learning about the desert 101," and"nature walks looking for birds." Doesn't that sound so fun?! I want to go do that this month so bad! They even have outdoor dessert yoga. So cool! We will be going back for sure!

When we got back to the front entrance of the park there was a information building that had a really cool gift shop, movie room, and animals! Here are two snakes we saw!

This is the skeleton of a cactus. Isn't this so neat? Who knew this is what a cactus looks like inside? Its like a tree. It is amazing! I now want to look up and research about cacti.

Inside a cactus that had a hole in it.

When we got home, there was a great treat of mickey mouse pancakes waiting for us! It is my sister Ambers birthday today, so her husband made her breakfast in bed and came up with these cute pancakes and even made us some! Jake, mom and I ate up and then got started on making Thanksgiving dinner!

Taking a break from cooking, and sitting by the fire! I love sitting by the fire and relaxing. I could stare at the flames for a long time. A small fire can be so beautiful (if its a contained fire ;)

That evening, all the families gathered around for a Thanksgiving Feast! Jake is doing a puppet show with Morgan and Brandon for Alyssa, Dean and Shane.

Funny kids.

All the kids tackling Jake. He is a good sport.

Thanksgiving dinner has begun! My brother in law David always makes the Turkey and does a fantastic job! He takes turkey making very seriously, and it shows in the taste and the moist turkey.

Mash potatoes, corn and homemade rolls!

Mom putting the finishing touches on this smorgasbord.

That is one good looking turkey! I don't really enjoy eating turkey, but I love eating Turkey at Thanksgiving, and especially when David makes it!

Deviled eggs! Mom always goes all out! She is the best cook ever! I hope someday I will be able to cook as good as my mom! I guess that also means..I need to start cooking...

Yummy! We all ate, and ate again, and ate again and had a great Thanksgiving!

Dad, Morgan and Cami.

John and Dean have really bonded. I would consider them best friends now.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day.

I love this picture! So cute!

After a great dinner and tons of pumpkin and berry pie, Alyssa and I played some more Lamb Chop.

Jake played outside with all the rest of the kids for literally hours. He is going to be the best dad ever. I think he pushed Alyssa on that swing for at least an hour and a half. He is the best! I am so glad he loves playing with my family!

Gavin and Bree.

All the kids playing on the playground!

Mom made Amber a birthday cake and we all sang happy birthday to her! It was so fun having everyone there! After, Jake and I ran to Walmart to see if we could get any of the Nintendo games! We got to Walmart around 9:30 and stood around the crate of stuff we wanted, while the stuff was all wrapped up in susan wrap. There were so many people there it was a mad house. Jake and I felt like savages. Good and bad. I was really liking the black friday starting at 10pm. Well, guess what? When the susan wrap came off, I reached my hand in crate, and happened to grab the things we wanted! The people using there carts to block people didn't keep me out! Just kidding, the shopping carts did work, but I went around!
Jake and I got for the Wii Lego Batman and Harry Potter for $15.00 each, for the PSP How to Train your Dragon $10.00, and Toy Story 3 (which my cousin helped make because she works at the Disney gaming factory designing)$15.00, Grand Theft Auto 5 and one other random game Jake got. We also got Scooby Doo and 27 Dresses for $1.95 each. Awesome! Merry early Christmas to us! We LOVE playing video games!

When we got home, we hung out with everyone till midnight, and then everyone went home. Mom, Amber, John Jake and I stayed up till two playing Five Crowns! I forgot to take a picture of the score card but John won us all big time! He had like 20 points and everyone else had 100+.

When we were finished playing games, we were all so tired and going to go to bed, but Jake had a better idea. He said, lets go to Walmart! So mom, Amber, Jake and I went to Walmart at two am! We had so much fun looking around and playing! After, we then went to Target and got some more good stuff! If black friday could start every thanksgiving night instead of early morning, I would be 100% in!

When we got home, Jake and I had so much fun looking at all the fun stuff we got! I am so excited to start playing some awesome video games and watching some great movies! Thanks Black Friday.

Friday, we woke up in the afternoon from staying up till 4am partying ;) Totally worth it! Amber, Jake and I worked on printing out some flyers and getting them ready to pass out!

Bryce, his cosign Payton and Brandon were awesome and volunteered to pass out flyers for a QT trip and a good tip. We all got yummy corn dogs, icee's and candy! YUM! They did so awesome! They passed out enough flyers for 3 hours of flyer passing out! They were the best! Thanks boys!

Then Amber and I got all our stuff ready to the boutique the next day, by putting all our stuff in containers and getting things ready to go. Then her and I and Jake went to Michael's to try and find some bags. We found what we were looking for, and of course a lot more! These kind of stores are so hard for me to only buy what I went there for.

Then we decide to top off the night with a late night Native New Yorker trip! Yes please! I can never get enough of these wings! So delicious! This was a perfect way to end the night! Time to get to bed early to get ready for the boutique tomorrow!