Sure feels like Christmas when...

The ice is frozen! We'll be able to skate soon! Or so we thought. After these four dedicated snow shovellers spent hours clearing a very large surface, we got a chinook! Gotta love Southern Alberta! Sara, Hannah and mom even played hookey on Monday - that's right - hookey, not hockey and we went to Castle to ski for the day. After two runs, we went and got our money back because it was a slushy mess. The upside was that we got to come home and make gingerbread all afternoon. The gingerbread house decorating is planned for tomorrow night. But, as for the ice, the chinook is now over so perhaps we'll be skating this weekend after all. And that, will feel like Christmas!

Alberta School Attire

We have had absolutely frigid weather here for the past few days. After swimming lessons today Hannah tucked her braids under her hood because she was afraid they would freeze and crack off on our short walk to the car! This is what a typical morning looks like when Sara and Hannah head off to the bus! On the bright side, it means that we'll be skating and skiing very soon!

Halloween!

Remember how you couldn't sleep the night before Halloween? And you would dump out all your candy as soon as you got home to count how many of each kind you got? What a fun holiday!

We had a Trunk or Treat at the church on Saturday and then carnival games inside. The weather was not your typical Southern Alberta Halloween weather. It was about 15 degrees and sunny! Later in the evening we made homemade rootbeer with our cousins using dry ice. What a delicious treat! But, right now, I think we'd all agree that we do not want to see any more chocolate until NEXT halloween.

Wishbone

Last night Hannah and I split the wishbone from the Thanksgiving turkey. I was amazed because Hannah did not know what a wishbone was. First we explained and then we both made our wish and then counted down 3 2 1 PULL!

We puled and CRACK! I had the top! Hopefully my wish comes true. I will find out soon!

What Makes You Happy?

This is what I asked Hannah and told her to give me her answer in pictures. I thought you might enjoy her responses as much as we did. To be fair, her siblings were not here at the time so her creativity is evident! I took the photo of her because she's one of the 5 biggest reasons I'm happy! What makes YOU happy? :)

Our Eventful Day

Thanks to all of our cheering squad on our busy Wednesday. All went well. The plate and screws are out. I will no longer set off alarms at airports! I managed to be awake for the surgery this time and saw what the hardware looked like. Modern medicine is amazing!

Matt had a fantastic run. He placed second right behind Matt Knapik, his friend from school. His time was 7:53 for a 2km run. Fairly quick. :) You can see from the photos what a beautiful day it was in Medicine Hat!

Conference Weekend

Early thursday morning we headed out to Salt Lake City, Utah for General Conference. When I say early, I mean EARLY! We left at 4am. Do you know how shocking to the system it is to shower at 3:30am? But, it was worth it as we pulled into Salt Lake at just after 4pm. When we got there we were all STARVING, we decided to go to a burger place that some friends had recommended called In And OUT Burger. That night we all went to BYU and mom and grandma went to the Stephanie Nielson talk and they said it was great. While they were listening to the talk dad and grandpa Parker, Matt, Hannah and I toured around BYU. It was great. We saw the MTC and we went to the BYU book store. Hannah got a BYU t-shirt it is blue with BYU written across it. Parker got a blue under armor shirt that has the 'Y' on it. I got a new blue football jersey. It has the 'Y' on it and is really awesome. We didn't find anything for Matt. After that we were on our way back to the hotel in Salt Lake. We were prepared for the BYU game now that we were going to on Friday night against USU in Logan.It was a great day/ couple hours. The atmosphere was very cool but the game absolutely stunk because BYU lost. Conference was wonderful. We went to the Saturday morning session. It was pretty amazing! Dad, Parker and Matt went to the priesthood session with Grandpa. They loved it. We drove home all day sunday and got home in time to sort the laundry! Mom was thrilled!