Hey everybody,
Thought I would take just a minute and talk about what we have been doing the last few days. Lets start with Thanksgiving day yesterday. This year we broke from tradition. Jordan is stuck down in Utah working and Tyler is on a mission. That leaves Jacob, Emily, Dianna, and me. Instead of spending 6 hours preparing food and then spending 10 minutes eating it we decided to let the good people at Black Angus Steakhouse do the work for us. And it was delicious! Before I get to the play by play of our dinner, I should mention that before our 3pm dinner reservation we decided to see the "Catching Fire" movie or as I like to call it, the Hungrier Games.

The movie was actually pretty good as movies go. Did anyone else find it weird that the movie ended similarly to the end of the 1st Breaking Dawn movie? Yes I know I have lost some serious man points by even seeing both of those movies, let alone comparing them. After the movie we were all starving so we headed to the restaurant.

We started with 2 wagon wheel samplers. We were all full after the appetizers, now that felt like traditional Thanksgiving. Then I moved on to the bleu cheese bacon wedge salad, a culinary masterpiece. The rest of the family stayed with the Caesar salad (boring). Then it was on to the main course. Teriyaki Chicken for Dianna and New York Steaks with loaded baked potatoes for me and the kids. Is anyone else getting hungry as I describe our Thanksgiving dinner? And for the grand finale there was a giant piece of chocolate cake for Jacob and me and a very large cookie with ice cream for Dianna and Emily. The true mission of Thanksgiving dinner is to allow each member of the family to tell what they are thankful for and then for everyone to eat to the point of throwing up. So, mission accomplished!

And to top it all off, we felt like humanitarians because we saved an innocent turkey somewhere in the world from a certain death. Yes, I know, we may have been a part of killing a chicken and a cow, but let's face it, they deserve to die because they are just too yummy.

I know some of you are thinking "what about shopping?" and others of you are thinking "what, no football?". Patience my friends, our day is not over just yet. When we got back home we had enough time for Jacob to put leftovers in the fridge and then we were out the door and on our way to Walmart. Jacob and I waited around for the 50" Emerson LED TV and Dianna and Emily stood in line for the videos and games. After receiving our wristband, Jacob and I went back to the Electronics and watched the football game that was on (football check). Then we went into the garden center in the back corner and made a little fort on top of the bird feed and avoided the millions of people milling about. I actually thought the girls had left and gone to Target otherwise we would have at least went over to them and made fun of them as they stood in the line.

After picking up the TV and a few other things that we probably really didn't need, we came home and set up the TV and BluRay player and put in the Green Lantern. Then we all fell peacefully into our Thanksgiving food coma and dreamed of sugarplums and puppy dogs.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Taking over

By now all of you have realized that my mother isn't the best at keeping our blog up to date (as shown by the last post on May 1st, 2012) so from this point I was sustained as the Byron family Blogger.

Anniversary Weekend

This year for our anniversary we had the hardest time deciding what to do. At the very last minute we decided to drive down to Utah and go on our first date again. We drove straight through, 15hours, and spent the 1st night in Salt Lake. The next day we went to The Salt Lake Temple, Visitor's Center and Museum. After that we drove down to Provo and went to Los Hermanos and the dollar movie. We spent the next day shopping, visiting friends and at Trafalga. In the evening we met up with a bunch of friends at Brick Oven, unfortunately we forgot to get a picture while everyone was still there. Before we drove home we visited with my family. It was a very, very quick trip but a lot of fun.
Really cool replica of the temple in the visitor's center.

Museum

Trafalga

Brick Oven

My Sisters, Melissa and Amanda

My cute niece made Chris a special cookie

Movies

Hunger Games Premier. The girls were so excited.

My Birthday

I had a great Birthday this year. Chris took me on a chocolate tour of Seattle. It was a lot of fun, we got to try about fourteen different chocolate things like red velvet cupcakes, Ice cream, cookies and more. I really enjoyed it, in spite of the fact that I woke up that morning a little sick to my stomach. I still managed to eat all the samples though. When I got home my very sweet kids had spent the entire day blowing up balloons and sticking them to the ceiling. They also made me a lovely birthday cake. My family is great.

New Beginnings

I was in charge of decorations for New Beginnings this year. I spent a really long time making everything so I thought I better show off the pictures.

Jacob is officially a Scout

For Jordan

This is Emily doing her splits, she's been working really hard, and this is my slip extender I made. I've really been wanting one but they are about $28 online and I couldn't bring myself to pay that much so I made one for about $10, it would have been cheaper if I used one of my slips I already owned.

New Years Eve

For New Years Eve the girls and I went to the movies and then we met up with the boys for dessert and appetizers at Applebees, we finished the night at home watching the countdown.

Christmas

Christmas

I like Jordan's face below, it was a little early for her to be up.
I got a Silhouette paper cuter

Jacob got lots of camping stuff (for Scouts), video games and toys

Tyler got a smart phone

Jordan got a smart phone

Chris got a keyboard for his ipad

Emily got lots of clothes, shoes and makeup

Catching Up-Tyler's Birthday and Hawaii

For Tyler's 17th Birthday he went to Hawaii with his dad. Some of the places they went were to the Arizona Memorial, the Temple and the Polynesian Cultural Center.

Catching Up

I guess it's time to catch up on my blog. I have a good excuse though, my laptop broke right after school started and I couldn't possibly walk all the way to the downstairs computer to work on my blog, so I had to wait until after Christmas when I got my new laptop to start blogging again. By the way, the song playing is one of my new favorites from the Breaking Dawn soundtrack, I can't seem to get it out of my head.

So here it is:

Scouting-Look how much Jacob loves his mom(notice the elbow to the chest)

Jacob Receiving his Arrow of Light

A couple of the older boys put on a really neat ceremony for Jacob, complete with Indian attire and all.

First Day Of School

Just and FYI....Emily was mad she had to wear her cheerleading outfit on the first day of school. She really wanted to wear some of her new clothes. When Emily got to school the principal told her that her skirt was too short and she needed to wear leggings under it or put sweats on over it, but she could take the leggings off during the assembly and games. Don't you think they should get longer skirts if they are supposed to wear them to school but they are not allowed to wear them to school, or maybe they should not be told they have to wear them to school?? Or maybe they could make an exception for the cheerleaders who are told to wear their uniforms to school on assembly and game days. It's seems a little confusing to me.

Anyways, Emily is starting 8th grade, Tyler is in 11th and Jacob is in 5th.

Vacation-Our Last Week-Days 30-35

Day 30-We went to dinner at Fogo De Chao (a Brazilian restaurant) with our friends the Isom's and then we went to see Captain America. All the kids stayed back at the apartment and went swimming and watched movies.

Day 31- We drove up to New York. We checked into our hotel on Staten Island around 4:00pm and hurried to make it into New York City for the evening. On the ferry ride over we saw the Statue of Liberty, it was actually much smaller than I expected it to be. Even though we only had a few hours we managed to see Wall Street, Trinity Church, Ground Zero and just got to experience New York. It was very dirty and there were piles of garbage all over the streets. It looks so pretty on TV.

Day 32- Last night we stayed up until about 1:00 in the morning and then the kids insisted we get up at 6:00am to drive over to Carlos Bakery. I'm pretty sure this was the entire reason the kids wanted to come to New York. We made it to Carlos Bakery by about 7:30 and only had to wait in line for about a half hour. It was the highlight of the day and we got to try lobster tails, cannolis, eclairs and of course a red velvet cupcake for me. The lobster tails were awesome and the rest of the stuff, well not so much. I didn't even finish my cupcake:(

After we were done at Carlos' Bakery we went over to New York and we went to Battery Park, Time Square, Central Park, all the fun stores like, Hershey's and the M&M store. The girls managed to get tickets to Mama Mia so the boys went to Ripley and spent a lot of time playing around in Toys R Us.

Day 33-Our last day in New York-We went to See Wicked, my favorite Broadway play and the highlight of my trip. The boys and Jordan went to FAO Schwarz and saw Transformers. We ended the evening in the very busy Time Square and on the way back we stopped and saw the Empire State Building and Madison Square Garden. Overall it was a really fun trip and I'm glad I got to experience New York.

Day 34 was a packing and cleaning day.

Day 35 We flew Home and missed the Earthquake in Virginia by less than an hour. We are all very happy to be home and to not have to deal with the Hurricane that Chris gets to experience this weekend. After so much to do everyday, we are currently suffering from extreme boredom and hope it passes soon.