Thanksgiving

Every year since we've been dating, Blaine and I go to good ol' Declo Idaho for Thanksgiving. Blaine's grandparents and aunt and uncle live there. We absolutely love visiting them. We always look forward to Aunt Jan's amazing cooking, Uncle Lynn's neverending jokes, spending time with Grandmom and PopPop and playing with the kids. This trip was so nice because Blaine and I haven't left Provo since our summer vacation. We usually visit Vegas and Idaho a lot but this semester has been different since Blaine works on Saturdays. So we were really looking forward to getting away for a couple of days.

Tuesday night we arrived, had dinner, and enjoyed talking with our family. The next day, I started helping Jan bake some pies for Thanksgiving. She makes the best coconut cream pie ever. So in the process of making them, I messed the cream up by not stirring the eggs fast enough into the hot, smooth cream. We had to go get more ingredients. I felt so bad! But this mistake really helped me learn how to make my favorite pie ever -Aunt Jan style. I also discovered one of Aunt Jan's secret ingredients - Madagascar Vanilla Bean paste. YUM! I will never go back to using regular vanilla again.

We all helped with Thanksgiving preparations. Blaine and Grandmom were in charge of peeling the yams for the sweet potato casserole. This dish is Blaine and I's favorite. It's what we look forward to the most for Thanksgiving. Before I met Blaine, I absolutely hated yams and sweet potatoes. But one Thanksgiving at Aunt Jan's changed all that. Now I eat all things sweet potato. This trip, I also learned to like something that I've never been a fan of. I don't like banana bread. I have problems. I don't like a lot of fruits but I do like bananas but I hate banana bread. Makes sense. Anyway, I've tried chocolate chip banana muffins and all kinds of banana breads. I just don't like it. But Aunt Jan made some banana bread Tuesday night. She shoved a piece into my mouth before I could protest (in her defense, she didn't know that I didn't like banana bread). I tried it and LOVED it! So I stole her recipe :)

Anyway, Thanksgiving Day was great. We ate so much food and were surrounded by family. Blaine and I also talked about the many things that we are grateful for. We really are so blessed! We had leftovers for days. It was so yummy. We watched classic Christmas movies - Home Alone, Christmas Vacation, and Elf (my personal favorite). We usually help Aunt Jan put up her Christmas decorations the night of Thanksgiving, but she had them all up before we arrived! 

So Blaine and I left at 9:30 PM to begin our Black Friday shopping. Aunt Jan had to work the next day and gave us her shopping list. It was crazy. Walmart was like a jungle. People were going wild and it was packed! I thought that it wouldn't be so bad since we were in middle-of-nowhere Idaho, but I was oh so wrong! We were able to grab everything that we needed in less than an hour and left in time to drive an hour to Twin Falls Idaho for some more shopping. We waited in line at Best Buy for an hour to grab the Xbox 360 Holiday bundle. Blaine's broke that week so we decided that this was a good deal. We had about 500 people in front of us and didn't think we were going to get one. To our surprise, we grabbed one of the last ones! Blaine was one happy guy. The rest of the night, we were in and out of stores. At around 2:00 AM - 3:30 AM, we became extremely tired. There weren't any stores open that we wanted to go to, so we attempted to take a small nap before more stores opened at 4:00 AM. It was cold and uncomfortable so we didn't get much sleep. Our car was so packed that we couldn't recline our chairs! After realizing that taking a nap would be  impossible, we grabbed some breakfast at McDonald's and headed over to more stores. We didn't finish shopping till around 7:00 AM and didn't make it home till 8:00 AM. Uncle Lynn had some more breakfast ready for us, we ate and went to bed by 9:00 AM. We were so exhausted. I didn't wake up till 5:00 PM! Although we bought a lot of great things, my favorite Black Friday deal was the marble Christus statue. I've always wanted one and really think it's a beautiful piece to display in any Christian home.

That night, we watched the LDS film 17 Miracles. It was such a good movie. It's based on true accounts of the pioneers in the Willie Handcart Company. It made me feel so grateful for the pioneers, the gospel, for being born in this country and during these times, and for all the things that we have! These people had so much faith. I had chills throughout the entire movie. I highly recommend it! Even though we slept till 5:00 PM that day, Blaine and I were still pretty tired. We had no problem going to bed at our usual time.

Saturday was a great day as well. Aunt Jan is a Beehive advisor and taught a class in church on Sunday about heritage and traditions.  So Saturday we made some traditional Christmas cookies that Blaine's great grandmother would make for the whole family as a treat for the class. We made chocolate crinkles and almond crescents. They were so so good! It was fun learning more about Blaine's family and their traditions. I am so grateful that I married into a family that is so great. I love them all so much and it's always fun to get to know them better. Jan's class was great and the rest of Sunday was a typical family gathering. Everybody came over for lunch. Blaine played games with the kids, I curled Aidan's hair, we played with Rusty, Jan's dog. We talked and just lounged around - not doing much but having a great time. Unfortunately, our relaxing break had to come to an end. But we had a great time with our Idaho fam! We love them so much and are so grateful to have them near!

(I always forget to take pictures while we're in Idaho! I promise to take more pictures on our next trip).