Another Thanksgiving in the Books!

I feel like I've been a little off my game with blogging lately and I'm here today to try to get caught up a bit by {finally} blogging about Thanksgiving.   What about the trip we took back in September, you ask?  Well, blogging about that, my friends, is going to have to wait for another day.  Maybe another year.  My bandwidth is not quite there for diving into trip photos yet.   

So, I'll start off the rundown on Thanksgiving with our Christmas decorations.      I've been feeling a lot more minimalistic this year and we didn't even put half of the ornaments on the tree this year.  I originally thought we might get a narrow tree for the dining room to display some of the other ornaments, but ultimately we left it more sparse.   Maybe we'll find a tree on clearance at the end of the season.    

I also tried to go a little lighter on decorating the display shelves.    It's probably still too much and it's definitely way too much brown on brown, but until I finally get around to painting these shelves, it is what it is.  It usually takes 5+ years of an item being on my home improvement to-do list before I even think about making it actually happen. Someday...perhaps!     

IN Virginia, we almost always hosted Thanksgiving at our house, but we haven't done it much since moving here to Utah, since my Mom was already filling that role when we arrived.  {Click here to see a glimpse of  past Thanksgivings}. It's been nice to just show up as a guest the past few years.   This year, however, my Mom and sister needed a break and we became the host house!   With all the hosting we've done with the YSAs the last few months, it didn't feel as stressful as it might have otherwise.   We had 2 of our 5 kids there {Spence and Adam}, my Mom, my sister, two aunts, one uncle, three cousins, the mother-in-law of my cousin, and four kids of my cousin.   We assumed we'd have some of our YSA ward members join the crew, but everyone we talked to already had plans, and the 1st counselor beat us to the punch with the two that didn't.    That was right about 20 people...just enough to keep things lively, but without it being that stressful.   

Glen  smoked the turkey, made mashed potatoes, and gravy.  Adam and I made the pies, which turned out dog ugly, but tasted pretty good anyway!    I need to keep working on my gluten free pie crusts!   

The rest of the Thanksgiving dinner was made by everyone else, which is an awesome way to do things. We played one round of Codenames and then I gave everyone a postcard challenge.   Everyone picked a random word and I went through my postcard stash after they left and sent them a postcard with that word on it.  No one stumped me, though a few people got close (all with food words).   

 In the end I actually found postcards with a pretzel....

pasta...

 and another with a taco on it...  

The words they gave me (besides taco, pasta, and pretzel) were iridescent, watermelon, tiger, purple, lake, candy, beach, pig, octopus, and heat.  And none of the rest of them were that hard.  

 Haha!   Yes, I'm aware that I'm quite a nerd when it comes to postcards.    Feel free to leave a comment and challenge me with your own word.  😆

Now, back to more Thanksgiving shenanigans. 

The boys also played a lot of Magic the Gathering...

And I was quite enraptured with the pics from Thanksgiving out East!   I really missed having any of our girls home and I am somewhat obsessed with Oliver and Lucie right now.  I really really need to see them again soon.   Isn't that flannel on Oliver the cutest?!   

 Adam gave a talk the Sunday after Thanksgiving, so I skipped out on part of 2nd hour and went to watch.   He spoke about becoming new creatures through Christ and did a great job! 

Last but not least, we did a peppermint ice cream taste test over Thanksgiving week.   

Last year, we did Tillamook vs. Umpqua and declared Umpqua the winner.   

This year we put BYU Creamery and Farr's peppermint up against Umpqua....

And Umpqua won the day again!  

 It's got a great creamy texture and by far the best peppermint flavor.    We'll look for more brands to test next year and see if any can unseat Umpqua!   

 

All in all, it was a great long weekend with my boys and it was nice not to have much on our schedule.  I've got a lot to be thankful for and you, my dear blog readers, are on that list!  Thanks for tuning in and have a beautiful holiday season filled with  peace and lots of love.  

Free Therapy

I'll be honest...

I'm currently sick with a bad cold (and the worst sore throat I've had in many years) and I have a lot of things swirling around me that are keeping my head in a pretty negative space.   As such, I am using this blog as my free therapy for the evening and I am going to try  and use this post as an opportunity to embrace the positivity as much as I can.   Don't worry though...since I don't pay you to read my blog, I'll keep you out of the muck of my brain!  

I'll post more about this trip later, but last week I was in Rhode Island to celebrate Emma's Halloween birthday with her.  Yes, my third child is 25 now and I am kind of feeling extra old because of it.  Cami has a full-time job and two small children, but she still managed to make a beautiful cake for Ems, as well as put up some decor (neither skill which she learned from her mother).  It was fun to be there with two of my girls...

I also very much enjoyed the opportunity to spend Halloween with these two cutie pies, even if they sent me home with this terrible cold.   

I also very much enjoyed seeing photos of Adam and his roommates' Halloween costumes. 

Speaking of photos of my "babies", I just got this one of Ellie texted to me yesterday by a girl that used to be in Vienna Ward like 20 years ago!   I think she recognized her by her nametag, not her face.  In any case, it totally made my day (which isn't hard when you feel like I do)! 

 If you happen to know me in real life, you may or may not know that I  have two core love languages...one is food, the other is postcards.    I love sending and receiving both.   I send  A LOT  of postcards in a month (probably 50+ most months), but don't get too many in return.  That's okay, because I love sending them so much, I don't really care.   Recently, though,  I got a homemade one from my sister-in-law...

And another one from a friend I met in Portugal...

 Both made me very happy.  

Also, every Monday we get to do this...

The calls with Ellie are always a bit chaotic and we are usually missing one family member or another (this week Adam), but being able to gather virtually with the fam is something that brings me incredible joy...the next best thing to being all together in person.  

So, yes, life is hard right now, but it's also good.     Hope you're having a beautiful week.  

 

Cam's Big Summer Update

Alright, here we go with the next installment in our series of  What Our Family is Up To where I go person by person and give a little update on what we're all doing this summer.  You can see previous updates on Ellie, Adam, and Emma here and more will be coming soon.     This update is the only one that will feature more than one person, since Cami now has a couple cute little attachments (and a tall handsome one) that come along with her on her life adventures!  

Speaking of cute little family members, I guess I'll start off with the family pictures they had taken in May.  They were taken by a photographer friend of theirs on the grounds of the apartment complex they've lived in the last 3 years (Tributary Rise).  They turned out quite adorably if you ask me and it's fun that the photos captured a glimpse of the place that they've grown to love so much!   

 Next, I'll get on to the biggest family update of all...

 In June, Garrett finished up his internal medicine residency at the University of Alabama - Birmingham and Cami worked her last day as a nurse at Children's of Alabama and they packed up their apartment and moved approximately 1200 miles northeast for Garrett's fellowship at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.   

The moving crew consisted of 5 full-time missionaries, Garrett's parents, and of course Cami and Garrett...

And Lucie and Oliver...

Sadly, Rhode Island is approximately 500 miles further away from us, but I am happy to report that plane tickets there are cheaper and more plentiful than they were to Birmingham, so we are taking that as a win!  

Plus their state bird is a chicken, so that's fun... 😆

They took three days to drive to Rhode Island, hitting a new state along the way (South Carolina), visited Garrett's sister Ashley and family in North Carolina, and spent a night in Virginia where they visited the house we raised our family in...

and visited with AnnaLisa and Tim where Lucie and Oliver apparently charmed the socks off them and quite enjoyed playing with Tim's cat, Ash...

Then on Monday, they rolled up to the house they'll likely be living in for the next 3 years!   It's old and doesn't have AC or a dishwasher, but after apartment living for the last several years, they're excited to have a little room to run around!   

In the meantime, Oliver started walking (finally!) and Lucie is really excited to make new friends.   I was also quite delighted with Lucie's reaction (shown above) when she received her first postcard from me in their new mailbox.   She didn't realize that postcards could come to Rhode Island too!   Each new discovery of something familiar in Rhode Island (like a farm, Lifetime Fitness, primary, etc), makes her happy!

Now, I am eagerly trying to figure out when I can come visit  my favorite  new New Englanders!   

A Quick Pit-stop on the Mainland: Belgium and Luxembourg

I'm aware that this blogpost will expose me as the travel nerds we are, but you probably already knew that to a certain extent, so I'm going for it.  So far I've blogged about  Scotland (the first leg of our trip),  Northern Ireland (the third leg of our trip), and  Ireland (the fourth and final leg),  but we had a pitstop in Belgium/Luxembourg between Scotland and Northern Ireland.  Why?  Because  Glen had never been to either one of them and we thought we'd take advantage while we were in the "vicinity".  Of course, the term vicinity is being used lightly here since they were a plane ride away, but relatively speaking we were much closer to Belgium/Luxembourg than we normally are and inter-Europe flights on RyanAir can be found for  cheap.  

So we went for it.  

It was a pretty quick trip, because we didn't want to short-change the British Isles, but we ended up really enjoying this fun little foray into mainland Europe for a few days.  In fact, if you ask Glen what his favorite part of the trip was, he'll likely tell you that he loved all the places we visited, but Belgium was his favorite.  And we both agree that it definitely had the best food and that's not even close!

We arrived into the Brussels Charleroi Airport (the small airport RyanAir flies into) and immediately jumped on a bus to Ghent.   We chose Ghent, because we had time for one city and it had been one of our favorite stops when I took the kids to Belgium in 2019. 

We figured since we were only spending 2 nights in Belgium, that we should get a hotel as centrally located as possible.   The Ghent Marriott (right where my finger is pointing ) is located right on the canal and was ideal for exploring the city! 

We were very excited to locate a Belgian waffle place nearby THAT HAD GLUTEN FREE WAFFLES TOO!   I  might have been a bit giddy about that and we definitely stopped there a couple times!  They even had gluten free speculoos topping for it that made me extra happy.

I was excited to introduce Glen to the Ghent "noses" that we discovered on our last trip here.   They're a locally made gummy candy that resemble a nose shape, hence the name.   

They're decently good (especially when fresh), but, frankly, I was more excited by other Belgian foodie finds.  We ate well on this leg of our trip!   

Since we only had a short time in Belgium, we debated about the most effective way to see the sites.  Ghent is a fairly compact city, but we'd walk by things, and think, "Wow, that's beautiful," then not really know anything else about it.  

What we ended up doing is buying a Scavenger Hunt off of Trip Adviser, which was a perfect way to see the city.  It took us to all the big sites (and some smaller ones), would give us information about them when we arrived, and even had games/challenges we could try.

I liked that we could go at our own speed, taking time to go inside those places that interested us.  We definitely saw a lot more of the city than we would have just by wandering. 

I was flooded with nostalgia when the scavenger hunt brought us to this alley filled with graffiti.   I had totally forgotten that this was in Ghent and we have several pictures of Ellie and Adam here from 2019.   I actually love when cities provide graffiti zones where local artists can showcase their talents. 

Between the food, the gorgeous architecture, and the walkability of Ghent, we were pretty enamored.   

We were a little reluctant to leave here after just two days, but it was time for one last adventure on the mainland before heading back to the Isles.  

Early the next morning, we packed up our luggage and hopped on a train for Luxembourg.  

It was about a 4-hour train ride, but the scenery between Ghent and Luxembourg City was stunning...especially the closer to Luxembourg we got.  It was hard to take pictures on a moving train, but here was one that actually turned out okay. 

  

We only had about 24 hours in Luxembourg City, so we logged A LOT of miles trying to see as much as humanly possible in that 24 hours.  

Luxembourg City was definitely the least touristy of the cities we visited, which meant finding postcards was harder than even usual.    It's like sending snail mail is a dying art or something. 😆 I never did find very pretty postcards there, but I laughed A LOT when we came across this one...

I've shopped for postcards in a lot of different places before and had never seen that kind of humor expressed on a postcard before.  The only thing I could figure was that at some point maybe some postcard manufacturer got Luxembourg mixed up with Luxor, Egypt and they just decided to go with it and make into a joke postcard.   My kids were VERY confused when they got theirs and originally thought they were delayed postcards from our trip to Egypt in 2023 (which I still haven't blogged about)!  

Food was also a bit of a disappointment in Luxembourg, but luckily we had been well-fed in Belgium, so it was all good. 
 
Luxembourg City is built into deep gorges formed by two rivers, which means that it's really a multi-level city.

We found a glass elevator that would take us between the upper and lower parts of the city without exhausting ourselves!   

This was taken at one of the biggest attractions in the city...Bock Casemates and the view from there was pretty spectacular. 

In fact, we found ourselves in awe of the amazing view quite a lot while walking around the city. 

And I'd say that at least 50% of the photos we took in Luxembourg were of gorgeous overlooks like this one...

We were also  excited to run into missionaries in the short time we were there.  They were out with friends doing a running club and asked us to take a few photos for them.   We hadn't even noticed there missionaries among them when they first approached us to take their photo, but they were so cute when we all realized.   I think their friends were as excited to meet Mormons "in the wild" as the missionaries were!  It certainly made our day, especially since the last time I'd been in Luxembourg was when I was 14 and we stopped to visit my cousin, Scott, who was serving his mission there in 1987, so it seemed only fitting to see missionaries here again, nearly 40 years later! 

We very much enjoyed our time in both Belgium and Luxembourg...

But before we knew it, it was time to head back to the British Isles....Luxembourg to Belfast, then Dublin, then home...

And now, the trip blogposts are done, and I'm back to real life!

******************************************