THANKSGIVING

We had thanksgiving with my family in washington state...good ol Salkum WA. At first we werent going to go becuase of the price tags on flights, BUT I found this awesome website called studentuniverse.com that gives discounted tickets to students, you have to give a university email and they were 50% off!!! It was amazing, we were sooooo excited to be able to go. And when we got there we were even MORE excited...if thats possible. We really needed to vacate pittsburgh and just relax around people we are 100% comfortable with. We took the bus to the airport from campus right after our organic chemistry test :( and got there really early, then our flight was delayed, then we spent 7 hours on a plane with a lay over in dallas and finally arrived in Seattle at 11:15 pm. I threw up on the second landing, my first time using a barf bag on the plane! Eldon picked us up then we drove 2 hours to my parents house. So what did we do all that time? We read Jurrasic Park 1, it is actually exactly like the movie, with almost No deviations. It was a fun read tho.

We spent the most of tuesday just hanging out. We played charades in the afternoon that was fun, Jordan had to be herbie the love bug and I had to act out the sone jingle bells!! We drank hot chocolate, talked, went to ethans board of review for his eagle (he passed!) and then headed up to Lacey (60 min away) for some thanksgiving shopping. We stopped on the way back home, leaving the groceries with the boys and the girls went prego shopping at old navy. They had great clothes and a lot of ripped pants that we got 50-60% off. My lovely seamstress mom sewed them up for me and hemmed them to my length. They fit perfectly!

Wednesday Mandi, Ryan and the kids showed up! :) Jordan and Eldon team taught seminary that morning. ( my mom is the seminary teacher and it is at our house ) Mom, Ethan and Chelsea all go to centralia college and still had class on wednesday and like goobers actually went! Jordan and I realized how slackerish we have gotten, who goes to class? So chelsea dragged me into going, it was fun tho to see the little morton campus. Eldon brought his 4-wheeler and that was awesome, despite protests from the fam (jordan was ok with it tho) I went 4 wheeling with chelsea first and later Eldons best friend Blake came down from Seattle with his 4-wheeler and took chelsea and I on a 3-4 HOUR trip!! It was sooo much fun. I rode with eldon and Chelsea rode with blake. My parents live in the booney's so we drove about 20 min to find a random spot up in the forested hills and started looking for trails in the forest. After finding some logging sites we finally found some really fun trails. My poor little legs were too short to reach the foot holds sitting in the back so everytime we went over a little jump and got any kind of air I was completely off the seat, which was really funny, it always felt weird to land again. We wound through the trails so much I was amazed that we actually found our way back to the truck. The trails were awesome, nice and muddy! At one point Eldon asked if the trail looked familiar, and it did, but I swore it was familiar going the SAME way, and sure enough it turned out we were going in circles!! That was hillarious, lucky we had chelsea she remembered the trail off the circle route that led back to the main trail that eventually led back to the truck, which we still werent 100% sure was going to be there till it popped out of the trees at us.

The next day was TURKEY DAY!! Overall we had 26 people in the house. Amazing. The chatmans arrived that morning along with Jennie and Seth and NEW baby Olivia Fay Post and my aunt Sandy, Uncle Larry and Jennies brother Nathan. Sis Chatmans new baby Jaleece is adorable! she had soo much hair, it was fun to hold her, and with two babies I was able to pawn them off on Jordan every time I got the chance. Trying to break him in as much as possible. Olivia is 4 months and Jaleece was 6 weeks. Around 8am all the boys went to play turkey bowl. My dad, Eldon, Ethan, Ryan, Jordan etc... I usually go but wasnt feeling that great. Jordan said it was the funnest football game he ever played. Of course it was really muddy, but the temp wasnt that bad. They had a great turn out and played for about 2 hours. Jordan made a touch down! and several passes to touch downs. Jordan loved how everyone played their guts out and there were a lot of big guys from the ward that made it fun, along with some of ethans friends.

We ate food all day, and around 5 sat down for the feast. My stomach is doing SO much better now a days, and liked all the turkey and potatoes. Jordan fell in love with candied yams and I devoured rolls. Afterwards we all went upstairs and did the traditional "say what your thankful for most this year" Jordan like the awesome guy that he is said he was most thankful for me, and being best friends and doing everything together, and my healthy body and pregnancy. Then we went around the room everyone saying what they were thankful for. I am most thankful for wonderful easy going righteous people in my life. I was so excited and blessed to be in that room with all of my favorite people around me. I really am grateful for my family and friends and how they think and how they live their lives and are always the same great people no matter how long it is till I see them again. I also am most grateful for Jordan, helping me through school and being my best friend 24-7, playing and being creative and goofy and working together. And last I said how grateful I was for my body and ability to get pregnant as planned. I really am SO grateful for all of those, but I really appreciate happy wonderful conservative people who are family oriented and so excited for you and your life and so easy to talk to and hang out with.

We played pictionary that night with Jennie, Seth, Mandi and Ryan. We won. :) then we got all 26 people in the living room and played Charades again, everyone put in their own ideas in a hat and then we went around and drew, everyone played even my dad and bro chatman. Eldon put in the hat " a carberator" and of course I drew that, it was really interesting to act out a carberator. It was hillarious, that was my highlight. Jennie and Seth spend the night and the next day all the girls left to go shopping. Of course it was only supposed to be a 3 hour trip but obviously turned into 8-9 hour trip and we were gone all day. The boys all stayed home and played with their man toys. Eldon has a sweat remote control car that goes like 45 miles per hour. We went to Jo Annes and Micheals, Panda express and then the catcher was Ross. Soon all the girlies were trying on billions of outfits. Aided of course by our all watching "What not to Wear" one to many times. It was a ton of fun. Being prego really does kill shopping, its not as fun to try on clothes and you definately dont want any knowing you wont fit them in 6 months.

Jennie and seth left saturday morning and the rest of the fam just hung out. I got really sick and couldnt make it to Mauras brothers home coming, which was sad but after church on sunday chelsea conducted her wards young women in Excellence program. She displayed her beautiful Sherbert Orange prom dress that she made. Eldon and Mandi and Ryn left on sunday. We did homework (chemistry lab report) all day monday, watched christmas movies and did paintings for chelsea and Ethans art class. We left Tuesday at 3 am to just barely make it for our 6 am departing flight...seattle airport is crazy busy everyone time we go. That was the one we missed our honeymoon flight to Hawaii at.....luckily that one returned to the seattle airport 30 min later and we were able to get on....we like to say heavenly Father sent it back for us as a reward for getting married in the temple ;)

We got into Pittsburgh at 4:30 on Tuesday and rushed like crazy taking our luggage to class with us to take our chemistry lab final at 6 pm...we were 10 mins late. Talk about cutting it close! But the test went well and then we were back home!

Overall thanksgiving was AWESOME!! It was sooo relaxing and just what we needed. We came back ready to focus on school again and get through the grind of finals this week and next week.