Moving on to Christmas!!!

The ground outside is covered in snow and the kids were itching to put up the tree so up it went! Every year the kids get a new ornament to put on the tree so they each have their own box to put up of their very own ornaments. I did O.K until I opened up Mitchell's box and then I lost it! It seems so strange to not have him here to do these family things! He even got his own ornament this year even though he is far away. Maddi's ornament is a pair of cowboy boots, Thomas got a Texas Longhorns one( I love E bay!) and Jacob got a little baseball player. I guess there is no turning back now... Christmas time is here!!!

Over the river and through the woods.......

On our way!!!

Mema and Grandpa with Mini Mitch

We had the kids make Indian or turkey hats to keep them busy so we made one for Mini Mitch too!

Mini Mitch doesn't have quite the appetite as the real Mitch so we had A LOT of mashed potatoes left over!

The cute cousins and their creative hats!

We, O.K I decided to not have Thanksgiving at our house this year because I was missing Elder Sheridan to much and didn't want to be home bawling the whole day. So we packed up and headed south, leaving the snow and cold for sunshine and cold for a few days. My brother decided to go down also so we had a packed house but it was SUPER fun. The kids had a great time just hanging out with each other and Thanksgiving dinner was AMAZING as always! Thanks Mom!!!
Little did we know that my Dad had just been checked out of the hospital that morning. He had to have another stent put in for another blocked artery. So what says recovery more than having 10 people(six of those being kids) crash at your house the day you get out of the hospital! They didn't tell us because they knew we would have stayed home, and they were right but I am so glad we were able to go . It wasn't nearly as loud and hectic as I thought it was going to be ( it probably was for grandpa though!)
We decided to take Mitch with us on the trip. Kevin's mom told us about a friend of hers that made a flat missionary( like the book Flat Stanley) and takes it with them and takes pictures to send to their missionary. I thought that would be fun so we made a mini Mitch to go on our adventures with us so he could participate in all of the Thanksgiving fun!
We had a really great time and I am so thankful for parents who do so much for us and give our kids awesome memories like we had growing up ! Thanks Mom and Dad for putting up with us! It was so much fun!

Sadies

In Mitchell's last e mail home he mentioned Maddi fingers are wrong in her Spiderman web slinging picture from the Sadie's dance at WX. So here is the picture from the dance! Also check out Mitchell's blog HERE to see how GREAT he is doing and how tall he looks next to the little Peruvian family... he looks like a GIANT!

Elder Sheridan's Christmas surprise

Thank you SOOO much to everyone who sent me a note to add to Mitchells' Christmas Advent calendar. I have tried to figure out how to send him a Christmas tree and some sort of advent calendar. This killed two birds with one stone! Now he will have a Christmas tree with a pocket to open up each day in December filled with a note from someone back at home. It turned out really cute and I am so grateful to all of you who took a few seconds to write him a note. It will be a fun thing for him as he spends his first Christmas away from home! I received so many I was able to put more than one message in each pocket!

Halloween

Halloween came and went in a blur. We carved pumpkins. I even carved Mitch's pumpkin for him. We went trick or treating in the pouring rain and hosted Thomas's swim buds for a Halloween party. Kevin and I thought of the scariest movie for them to watch, it scared the pants off of us when we were teens. The movie was... Poltergeist. Needless to say the 80's special effects and gore just wasn't up to par with what today's teens are used to. As we sat upstairs we listened to them ROAR with laughter at our "scary" movie. I guess they were entertained either way, they watched a newer scary movie from this decade when the comedy Poltergeist was over.
All in all it was a fun crazy weekend. Jacob was a vampire, Thomas was a Ghostbuster and Maddi was Rachel from "Glee" which really is the way she dresses anyway so no one really knew that she was dressed up.
Fun times!