Albuquerque Turkeys

1.  Hayden earned his Wolf Badge and advanced to Bears.

2.  We had a SUPER fun night out with friends celebrating some November birthdays.  We ate delicious food at Ruth Chris's Steak House, and then conquered the Escape Rooms.  The men did one and the ladies did the other.  The guys beat us by a couple of minutes, but ours was a more difficult room, (smaller percentage of completion) so I think we basically won.  It was a fantastic night out!

3.  A few of Sydney's school projects:

4. Crazy hair/hat day

5.  Bennett curled up with Arthur on the couch and fell asleep.

6.  Nathan is 5 months old, and is the cutest baby alive.  We all are enjoying him so much!  

6.  Arthur's Ford Focus bit the dust.  In this picture, he is hooking it up to the suburban so I can tow him home.  As I write this (March 2, 2017) it is still sitting in our driveway and we are trying to decide if we want to fix it and keep it for the teen car, or if we should ditch it and just get a different teen car.

7.  We didn't cut a tree down this year, but went to one of the tree lots here in town to pick one out for family night.  

We celebrate Dallin and Hayden's birthdays 10 days apart from each other at the end of November.  Dallin turned 15, and requested a pull-up bar.  He's been using that thing and can now do 25 pull-ups no sweat.  We are so lucky to have this guy in our family.  He is responsible, self-motivated, kind and helpful.  Happy 15th Birthday Dallin!

Hayden's birthday fell on a dress rehearsal for our Stake's Child is Born concert.  So we celebrated as best as we could in the space between school and the dress rehearsal.  He shares a birthday with several awesome people, one of whom is Sister Steel who shared her birthday balloons with Hayden since she knew he would appreciate them.  Hayden is spunky, funny, competitive and interested in all kinds of things.  We love this 9 year old! Happy Birthday, Hayden!

We were so lucky to have my sisters Natalie and Melanie come out for Thanksgiving weekend.  Melanie got here Wednesday night and left Friday morning, but we were so glad she made the drive down from Utah to be with us for basically a day!  Natalie got to stay Tuesday-Sunday, and we loved having her to party and get a break from her babies for the weekend.

I never seem to get very many pictures of Thanksgiving, but some of my favorite memories are all the kids helping peel potatoes, (especially little Bennett going to town),  working on puzzles, watching movies, playing games, a Thanksgiving morning Zumba class taught by Katie Smith, enjoying a delicious Thanksgiving feast at our house with my sisters and the Lisonbee family, tasting lots of mouthwatering pies at the Shepherd's home, going to see the latest Disney movie Moana together on Friday, and breaking out the Christmas decorations!  It was a happy weekend.

Family pictures again!  It rained on us.  So we had a last minute location change, Daphne's hair went flat, and mine went a little poofy.  But there was no way I was getting everyone ready again, so we went for it, and they turned out great anyway.   As great as possible with a different backdrop than we'd planned and 7 kids.  

the sisters

the brothers

Me and my boys

The Gariety Girls

Daughters with their Dad

The Handsome Gariety Guys