Thanksgiving

This year Thanksgiving was great. It was different not being with our families, but it was also so wonderful to spend it with other families who are just like us. We spent it with 4 other couples, all of who are in law school as well and have young kids. It made it less stressful on all of us women not to have to make the whole Thanksgiving dinner, and it was great having other kids around to entertain each other so us adults could have a somewhat peaceful dinner. The food was delicious and the company was great. After dinner the guys went into the other room and talked while us women stayed in the kitchen and talked. It was so nice to be able to talk to other mom's/wives who know exactly what I am going through and could give me some advice about the next couple of years. The other wives were wives of 2nd or 3rd year law students so they had great advice for the next couple of weeks while finals are approaching. We feel so blessed to have been able to make good friends here and to share Thanksgiving with them. Having people like them in our lives has made moving here a good experience and it has made being away from our families bearable.

Sunday we decided to have our own family Thanksgiving. Dan cooked the turkey.... yes, you did hear me right... DAN COOKED THE TURKEY! And I did the rest of the dinner. It actually was not nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be! We feel really good now that we have actually done an entire Thanksgiving by ourselves. It was really good and afterwards we decorated our Christmas tree. It was mostly me putting the ornaments on while Jaxon took the ones on the bottom off and ran around and Dan chased him haha... so basically our tree only has ornaments on the top half. :) But overall this year Thanksgiving was a huge success and we are so grateful for everyone in our lives. We truly feel soooo blessed and we know that we would not be where we are today if it were not for the Lord. We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we hope everyone has a great holiday season getting ready for Christmas and the New Year!

The Finished Turkey

Jaxon wanting to eat the Turkey

Our entire meal. I had to push everything to one end of the table because Jaxon was already in his chair and wanted to grab everything! 

Jaxon's sister?

I babysit this cute little girl every Wednesday and Jaxon love's when she comes over. This picture doesn't show it very well, but they actually look A LOT a like and she is the girl version of him haha - they seriously act exactly the same. It is super cute. She is older than him by about 6 months and so she says more words and he loves listening to her talk. They are really cute together!

Oh and I move our chairs away from the table because he always climbs up the chairs onto the table, but they ran around the couch, squeezed through the crack between the couch and wall and climbed up on the chairs LOL - got to love little kids!

BEST IDEA EVER

Ok, so I just came up with a really good idea. I'll tell you what it is first, and then I'll tell you why.

Thanksgiving needs to be moved up to the first or second week in November.

The reason for this is simple. People always complain when people put up Christmas decorations or listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Well here's the deal - Christmas is the biggest Holiday of the year, there is so much anticipation building up to this one day. People want to get their decorations up and listen to the music to get into the Christmas spirit long enough to actually enjoy it. So, if we move Thanksgiving up a few weeks, then people would wait until after Thanksgiving and still feel like they are getting enough time with their Christmas stuff, and then the people who complain won't have a reason to complain anymore and the world will just be a better place. I know, I know - great idea right? 

I saw this on my friend Rachel's blog... if anyone is interested in getting 50 free Holiday cards, click on this link and follow the instructions. It's really easy! :)

http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/

2:15am

Here it is, 2:15am and I am sitting up worrying like crazy about Jaxon. I just got him back to sleep but now I can't sleep. He has had a fever on and off for several days now and he has a really bad cough that makes him throw up sometimes cause he coughs so hard. He woke up this time coughing really bad so I went to get him and comfort him only to find that he was burning up as well. I gave him some medicine but after a few min's he started coughing so hard again that he threw up a little bit. So did all the medicine come up? Should I give him more? If it didn't come up, giving him more could be really dangerous. I have called his "primary care physician" who has never met Jaxon because he has only been to one well visit here and apparently even though they made the appointment - the doctor was not taking new patients, so Jaxon was checked by the nurse. I hate not having a good personal relationship with a doctor. We LOVED Jaxon's doctor in Utah and were very sad we would be loosing him. So now here I am... waiting for the on call doctor to call me back while I sit and worry like crazy about my sweet boy in the next room who, for now, is sleeping and hopefully having good dreams.

Law School Widow

So sometimes I feel like a widow. I'm sure wives of other 1st year law students know what I am talking about. Luckily Dan has been really good and tries really hard to come home for dinner and spend some time with us before we go to bed. He spends 12 hours at the law school Monday - Friday, and Saturday he is there for at least 6 or 7 hours. Thats not too bad. Lately however, and for the next 5 weeks or so, it's not going to be so nice. He had a 10 page memo due a little while ago and during the process of writing that, he stayed really late - and he has finals in about 5 weeks so he will be staying longer so he can be prepared. For those of you who don't know - the final is basically the only thing that is graded, so how he does on the final determines his grade. And for some reason, first year grades are VERY important. So needless to say - he needs to study a lot and be very prepared which means I will not have a husband for the next 5ish weeks.

Good thing Christmas is after that and we are having a nice little vacation so I can enjoy my husband for a little bit before the next semester starts!

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween! We went and picket out pumpkins and then the Sunday before Halloween, we went over to our friends Audrey and Brads house and carved them. Then on Thursday the 28th I took Jaxon to this "carnival" that the Science Spectrum was having for kids 5 and under. He had such a BLAST! My camera died at the very beginning which I was sooo sad about so I only go one picture, but it was so much fun. They had a maze, jump jump, games, candy, "scary" animals, a stage for kids to go on and show off their costume, and the kids just had a blast!!! The jump jump, stage, and maze were Jaxons favorite. Then that night our stake had a trunk or treat. Jaxon didn't care about the candy... he just wanted to run around! Friday I got super sick and was sick Friday, Saturday, and didn't start feeling better until Sunday night, so that ruined the other plans we had with friends and for the weekend. But Sunday night we watched Hocus Pocus and had trick or treaters come over... so that was fun/weird. Growing up in Utah - when Halloween falls on a Sunday, everyone goes trick-or-treating on Saturday instead... but that is only in Utah I guess. Overall we had fun. Holidays are much funner with a little kid. Jaxon made it such a blast! Here are a few pictures!