Thanksgiving

We had quite a houseful for Thanksgiving! Two great families - the Ransoms and the Tophams - joined us for almost 4 days of hiking, biking, talking, playing and eating to celebrate Thanksgiving. The weather was perfect and we fell in love with St George all over again as we showed our friends some favorite spots.

Jared went to school at MIT with Derek Ransom who was the best man at our wedding. I went to school with Kim Topham at Wellesely. Janessa Ransom went to Harvard with Dave Topham. We knew both couples, as individuals and then as couples, back in our Boston days. Then the two families ended up living in the same neighborhood in Alpine Utah and it's so nice to have our friends in easy driving distance now. Our collective 14 children thoroughly enjoy each other and match up really well age-wise. We're grateful for good friends and great Boston memories and all the new memories we're building together.

Our Thanksgiving feast was extra grand with the best recipes from three different families coming together. We were all so anxious to eat by the time dinner was ready on Thanksgiving that I didn't snap a photo of the main meal or the beautiful array of food - shoot. But above is a photo of the kids enjoying their pie. We had so much food that we were able to have a full second Thanksgiving dinner the following day. And on Sunday, after our guests left, we were able to make one more meal out of the final leftovers. The kids were delighted that we got to feast for 3 days like the pilgrims did at the original Thanksgiving.

Wii tournament - the four-year-olds were pretty darn serious about the whole thing

Here are the dads (and little Pierce)

Petroglyph hike - always a favorite

Jared, Derek and Dave got some great mountain biking in and we did a big group bike ride to the sand dunes. Kim, Janessa and I went out for a great girls night out - nothing like great food and excellent conversation with bright and interesting women.

We really couldn't have hoped for a better few days. In the midst of plenty of stress for me with getting Learning Circles up at The Power of Moms and way too much stress for Jared as he deals with near-daily crises at work while trying to keep his company afloat, it was nice to drop everything else and just enjoy family and friends and nature and good food for a few days. We're so blessed in so very many ways.