Thanksgiving Is Over...

Wow...we had quite a week! BYU lost to Utah, which put Eldon in a relative depression for days. It didn't help that while we were watching the game at Eldon's brother's house our niece threw up all over my lap, and Eldon - my hero - cleaned it off me while I held a dryer sheet to my nose and tried not to throw up myself from the smell of it. :) How could a four-year-old make so much of something so disgusting smelling?? It was not our greatest night.

Then my own family came into town and we laughed and joked together for hours almost every day. Eldon and I spoke in Sacrament Meeting on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and Bryce and Haley spoke the Sunday after, so my parents got to go to both meetings and relish in watching their children give talks. Ours were about finding joy in the journey and theirs were about the significance of the Sacrament. It was a neat time for all of us. There's something unique about being taught gospel truth by those you love most in the world ... That's probably why FHE is so great.

We discovered a new game we LOVE: Loaded Question. Have you played? My goodness, it's so fun. Each person on their turn reads a question and then has to match all the other players' answers to who wrote them. So in-laws were at a distinct disadvantage because only growing up in the same household could possibly help anyone to understand why we are the way we are. But there were some FUNNY questions that made my dad almost pass out from laughing so hard (he does that). Once Dad had this one: "What's the most beautiful word you can think of?" and we all had to guess what HIS answer would be. We guessed things like family, Mom, atonement, things like that. But he'd written "beautiful" because he's a smart alec. Then on one of his next turns his question was: "What's the funniest word you can think of?" (and those were the only two questions like that we'd seen in the whole game). Needless to say Dad got a LOT of points that round because we all guessed "funny". And while it may not sound that amusing to you, we were all howling with laughter the whole game. Mom was trying to guess which of us said our favorite category of Jepordy was "Literary Characters" and was leaning toward guessing it was Shauna's answer. I couldn't believe it! "Yeah," I said. "If it's literary characters in the Twilight series!" (because Shauna isn't the most ... voratious reader). It was actually my answer. Bryce had answered "Language and Literature" and Haley had written "Literature". So we're all pretty nerdy. Eldon wrote "The Founding Fathers" because he's been on this Constitution kick lately and reads books about government for fun. Anyway, it was a fun fun game and we loved playing it all together.

With Eldon's family we played MarioKart on the Wii and that was entertaining. It could make you seasick! My mercy, I could only play a couple races at a time before I had to hand my little stick thing to someone else to play. Our 5-year-old nephew was holding an unattached remote in his hand because someone had convinced him that he was one of the players. He got pretty into it. He kept asking, "Did I win??" We got a kick out of him. Also, we played Baci Ball (is that how you spell it?) and Eldon and I kicked some serious trash. Well, sometimes. We won, but it was only because no one had been keeping score and we decided that the last round would win. :) But still, we did pretty well. We didn't have enough balls so Eldon's brother Lance used big Arizona oranges instead. Sometimes those worked better on the grass than real balls ... until Eldon aimed right for them and knocked them and they flew out of the way squirting juice across the lawn. :)

My mom and I went to Joann Fabrics while Shauna stood in line for us and Eldon and Dad stayed in the car reading their books. :) That was fun. We were only in there for about 45 minutes, but we got some GREAT stuff on sale. I got some super cute fabric to make Chiara two more blankets (despite Eldon's teasings that a baby doesn't need more than 3 blankets). I just love that minty sage-ish color they make baby fabric out of. I got some soft fluffy green and a silky cream to go on the back of it. That may not sound cute, but it will be. :) Also I got some brown silky and some more lacey eyelet fabric to patchwork with my red polka dots on cream fabric. I'm putting soft, stonewached denim on the back of that one. But I promised Eldon I'd finish my online classes before I started any more projects, so the fabric is just sitting in my craft corner waiting for me. :) It's a huge motivator.

I may have mentioned that I bought Eldon a sweater for his birthday. It was wool, and while it says "Dry Clean Only" I've always just washed wool in cold water and then hung it to dry and I've been just fine. So, I bought it - willing to do the bit of extra work for the sake of Eldon wearing warm wool. However, I didn't think to tell him about the unique washing requirements of his new sweater because, frankly, I do the wash around here. It didn't even occur to me to warn him. But Eldon, seeing I was busy with my family in town and everything put a load of wash in the washer on Saturday morning while I was at Joann's with my mom. He'd just put the load in the dryer (a load of whites, no less) as I came home before 10:00am so he could get to his Saturday morning commitment at the women's shelter. He mentioned casually as he was walking out the door that he'd done a load of laundry. I kissed him gratefully, sent him off to his thing, and turned my attention to cleaning the rest of our little home. About an hour later I checked the dryer (our dryer is lousy so we usually have to run two dryer cycles to get our things dry) and found - amid the white sheets and shirts and things - his grey WOOL sweater ... which was now small enough for a 4-year-old. :) I laughed out loud, because what else could I do, at the irony of the situation. His brand new sweater ruined because he'd tried to help me around the house. It was my fault for not telling him, because he's so good at pitching in around here that I had no basis for my assumption that he wouldn't do laundry. Anyway, if anyone knows how to salvage a teeny tiny wool sweater and make it man-wearable again let me know. :)

P.S. Chiara has been kicking me the entire time I've been writing this, so I send you her salutation and hope that when she's holdable she finds other, more docile means of communication. :)