Thanksgiving 2014 - Guest Post by Ashton

Hey everyone - Ashton here. My mom asked me to do a guest post on Thanksgiving since she's having a hard time keeping up on this blog, so here we go. (Oh, and if you want to read about Halloween, my mom finally posted Eliza's post about that here.)

Thanksgiving this year was pretty awesome. We spent it at my grandparents' house in Park City. The Carvers (my second cousins) came, too, which was fun because I rarely see them. Some neighbors from Mexico also came. They were really nice. We ate the usual Thanksgiving things - potatoes, turkey, gravy, corn, pie, etc. The food tasted great, and we still have leftovers. 

These are some awesome people.

And here we are with my mom's high school picture. Nice hair, huh?

Another day, another strange picture from Eliza on my mom's phone.

Grandfather hanging up the 'thankful list' - the kids and grown-ups had a competition to see who could make the longest list of things they're thankful for. The kids totally won. Maybe partly because the grownups were busy making all the food.

 Isaac adding to the thankful list

 The girls adding to the list as well

 The beautifully set table - Grammie knows how to make things perfect.

 The turkey being carved by my mom's cousin Pat

 My dad readying the potatoes - he's the potato master.

 People lining up to dig in!

The 'grown-up' table

The girls' table

The boys' table

The food was amazing!

After feasting, we had some music time.

Me giving a request-based guitar concert.

Some awesome duets from Grammie and Aunt Lenna -
they used to play together all the time when they were little girls.

Here is Eliza giving a concert on her violin.

We also saw a couple movies over the weekend; Interstellar and Big Hero 6. Both were pretty good. After the festivities, we headed on over the the Hogle Zoo, which we hadn't been to since we were little kids. It was fun to see the animals and exhibits that we hadn't seen for a long time plus there was some great new stuff.

 Eliza stealing some hay from the elephants

 So interesting watching elephants eat. Seems like they don't have any teeth. They just sort of gum their food and swallow it.

A big ol' gorilla. Watched him watch us. Then watched him picking his nose and eating it until that got too gross.

Thanksgiving this year was one of the best ever. I had so much fun, and I got to see my second cousins. Thanks Grammie and Grandfather!

To end, here's a video Grandfather made - all about our thankful list and shows lots of the prep and cousins and everything: