Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving. My mom and two sisters came down from St. Louis for the holiday and we had a lot of fun. They were supposed to visit a year and a half ago, but for various reasons they were never able to make it.

It was so fun to have Naga with us. (For those of you who don't know, Naga is the name Kimball gave my mom when he was younger. It was his way of saying Granny. Naga just sort of stuck and she is Naga to Rebecah as well, although Rebecah pronounces it "Gaga". People have asked how my mom feels about being called Naga and my mom doesn't mind because she knows it was a name given in love.) Naga gave a lot of attention to Kimball and Rebecah. There was story time and walks each day. She also played with them on the floor.

Rebecah was very curious about Heather and would ask for her almost constantly, but Rebecah was never quite brave enough to sit with Heather or have a kiss from Heather.

We played games and watched Christmas movies in the evenings and helped my mom use her new Christmas present from us...a set of Hand bells. We had a lot of fun learning Joy to the World and Jingle Bells. Alas, no hand bell pictures...all hands were needed for ringing!

Playing Sequence States and Capitols

Annette and Rebecah



Heather, Chandra, Kimball, and Naga



Kimball and Naga thinking of strategy.



For Thanksgiving dinner we also had the missionaries over so it was a full table. We had turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, cranberries, green bean casserole and two types of pie. I'm not a pumpkin pie fan so we broke with Thanksgiving tradition and I made a sweet and salty truffle pie and my mom brought a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie pie. Both pies were chocolaty and good. We had pumpkin scones with berry butter for breakfast Thanksgiving morning. The scones were a big hit.

Eating Dinner
Joseph helping the kids with their plates.




At Lake Dardanelle State Park



Naga with Kimball and Rebecah



Heather and Chandra



Friday we decorated for Christmas and our company left on Saturday. It has been hard for Kimball to have Naga, Heather and Chandra gone. He keeps asking when they can visit again. He also comments that he wishes he could have them visit "forever". That is saying something since he slept on the floor 3 nights in a row!