Thanksgiving Week 2011

In light of the season, I am going to say I was grateful to be engaged in enough other projects, activities,  checklists & fun that I was unable to complete my thanksgiving month of thanks.  I am very very grateful and extremely blessed.  But I am thankful to be able to put that behind me without guilt (ok - a little guilt whenever I saw the last time I posted... But I'm over it now.)

Anyways, we had a fantastic Thanksgiving week. We stayed in AZ and were blessed to be able to have my mom and my Sister, Emilee and her family come and share the holiday with us. My dad had a work project that was going live just after Thanksgiving, so he was required to stay in UT, but insisted my mom come to AZ. I am grateful for an awesome dad.
She got to come the Monday night afternoon prior and stay until the Sunday night after. It was super fun to have her with us for nearly a week. Another point of gratitude!!!
Monday morning, I got a text from Jake that said his guitar teacher had asked if he would play at the cancer benefit the school was hosting in honor of Katie Wagner's 16th Birthday. Katie is a sophomore at BCHS who was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer recently. This had a huge impact on the kids at school and people throughout Anthem. The school and community have been successfully raising funds to help the family. This benefit was to help add to the fund. So my mom, Trevor and I all went and watched Jake play Bass on a very pretty acoustic version of "Somewhere over the Rainbow".  I am very grateful to have such a talented son and to live in such a caring community.

 Jake is on the right!

We also enjoyed the singing.  And, not to be mean, but we got the giggles during the dance section.  It's nothing personal to the girls who were dancing that night.  It was just very reminiscent of an event earlier in our lives, where we got to experience modern dance... We are unable to appreciate the expressiveness of interpretive dance - especially when "air bike pedalling" is involved.  We are not culturally refined people. And we're infectious gigglers!
Tuesday, my mom helped me gather delicious baked goodies from our RS sisters and take them to the stake for delivery to the Adobe Mountain Youth facility.  (and She mopped my kitchen - it was super gross!) I am so grateful for the awesome examples of my talented and generous ward friends.  You would not believe the huge heap of delicious treats we loaded into my car.  I had to stave off a hungry pack of boys (including Timm!)
This day, Timm came home around 2 and said he had a party for his basketball team at 6pm and then he said, "Since you love making cupcakes, I told them you would whip some cool ones up.  I was thinking it would be cool if you made the South Mountain logo..."  I am grateful he has confidence and pride in me... but I also wanted to wring his neck.  But alas I took the challenge.  I made two dozen chocolate cupcakes with blue marshmallow frosting and my version of the SM logo out of white chocolate.  Not my best work, but fine.  BTW - He owes me big time, as he seemed to be oblivious of the Adobe Mtn project (mentioned above) I was in the middle of!