For family night we wrote our letters to Santa. Luke ensured everyone knew the exact format to write their letter.  Start with Dear Santa, tell him if you've been good or bad then ask for whatever you want.  

 Claire's Letter:

 

Four years ago we added a new tradition to our Schultz Family Thanksgiving - the Earn Your Turkey 4 mile run on Thanksgiving morning.  There is a 4 mile run, a 2 mile walk and kids races.  The first year we did it we had shirts made and everyone did the race.  We had about 40 people in the race and 9 of the 10 kids did the race (Mark was on his mission).  I think we walked away with 4 or 5 turkeys that year.  I love starting off Thanksgiving with this race!!

This year only a few of us did it.  And I actually won my age group this year at 29:31.9.  Too bad we left right after the race and I didn't stay to pick up my turkey.  I ran the fastest I've ever run the race (7:30 pace).  It was 40 degrees this year which helped.  Timmy ran with me the whole time and then out sprinted me at the end.  I was so mad at him.  If you run together you finish together!!  

When I finished I ran back to meet Heidi and ran in her last mile with her.  It made me so happy that she was running.  She ran 3 of the 4 miles!!  The last time she ran consistently was when I made her train and do an Olympic distance triathlon.  A few months ago when I signed up for the Utah Valley Marathon Heidi signed up for the half marathon.  I LOVE IT!!  

My awesome sis-in-law Christine turned 40 this year. So I called Steve to ask him what we were doing for her big birthday and we decided to do a surprise party for her.  I made a big pasta dinner with 4 different sauces, salad, bread and chocolate cake of course.  The best part is that we had to figure out how to get her to my house Friday night and Steve called me Thursday because Christine was planning on doing a crockpot meal Friday so it would be harder to get her to come last minute.  So I called her and told her Megan was coming to dinner and could she and the boys please come so it wouldn't be too crazy with just me :)  She totally fell for it but refused to come without brining anything so she brought delicious homemade bread to her own party!  

When everyone got to my house I called them and told them dinner was ready and to come over.  Steve hadn't told the kids what was going on and they all came over seperately.  We turned off the lights and everyone was hiding inside ready to shout surprise.  Allen came in first and we all shouted surprise.  Then Ryan and we shouted again.  Then finally we had Tayson on look-out duty so that we didn't yell when Eric came in.  Then finally Steve and Christine came.  She had no idea we were throwing her a party!  Total success. 

 

These had cute balloons coming out of them as center pieces.
I didn't get a good picture of them and the kids kept playing with them so it was a bit crazy.

We put 40 candles in the cake and it was a HUGE fire!  So much fun.