Thanksgiving and Death Valley

We had a great Thanksgiving here. Just our little family all together, but it was still a lot of work for me. By the time I made some Jell-O, mashed potatoes, a salad, sweet potatoes, cooked the turkey and made three pies I realized that it doesn't matter how many people come for Thanksgiving. It's just a lot of work. Maybe next year we'll go to a buffet :)

This year I'm especially thankful for:

• The Lord providing just what I need when I need it. Everything from physical needs to growth opportunities, we seem to receive just what we need.
• Good health for me and my children. We have been so blessed in this area. It's really not fair, but I am truly grateful for it.
• A wonderful calling that makes me truly happy every Sunday. Have I gloated enough about getting to teach the ten year-olds?

I worked so hard on Thanksgiving, that I took Black Friday off. I didn't go anywhere or cook anything. I just stayed in, putzed around, and did a few loads of laundry. Then Bill, Faith, and I went to Mocking Jay Part One in the evening. Will babysat for us and did a great job. Ivy was in bed by the time we were home.

Saturday we went to Death Valley. We had been wanting to explore it a little bit. Bill had driven there by himself once before, but the rest of us had never seen it.  Our favorite part of the drive out was playing the game "I'm going to Death Valley and I'm going to die by..."  If you can guess our rotation based on our answers, you get ten points:

Apocolypse                       Lemon in my laceration                
Baboon Beating                Mickey Mouse's Magical Mooing Mirror
Chipmunk rabies              Nuclear Ninja
Dog                                  Obese kids
Elephant stampede           Pigeon Poop
Family puns                     Queen's orders                                      Will's pet Walrus
Gangrene                          Righteous Indignation                         Xylophone
Hell's Angels                    Starvation                                            Yodeling
Ivy                                    Thomas the Train                                 Zipper problems
Jigsaw puzzle                   Upcycled water
Knife                                 Virus

I brought the camera and tripod so we could take some family pictures to try to get a decent one for our Christmas card.  We took some pictures, ate lunch at a café that was only so-so and then went in search of the dunes.  On the way to the dunes, Ivy had to stop for a potty break in the bushes. It was the first time she went along-side the road without me there to hold her up. She did it standing up. We were all really confused and amazed because her pants were clean when she got back to the car. I'm still not sure exactly how she pulled it off.

The sand dunes were a big hit with the whole family (most of our pictures are from the dunes.) We did end up with sand in all sorts of places. I warned the kids (and Bill) when they did summersaults down the hill that they would end up with sand in places they didn't even know about yet...to which Ivy replied, "I think I already know one of them." She pretty much cracked us up the whole time.

 

 

Ivy was very sad until we fed her. After eating her very large hot dog and French fries, she was ready for more hot dogs.

Will's favorite thing is still photo-bombing, though I think the man behind me was even more effective.

After Ivy threw sand one too many times, Faith (very sweetly - and secretly) poured sand down Ivy's pants.

After the dunes, we went to Badwater briefly to see the lowest dry land in the Western Hemisphere. By that time, the family was all pictured out, but I thought it was a really neat thing to see, and it also reminded all of us of listening to Born To Run - the part about the Badwater Ultramarathon.  By then it was getting dark and time to return home.