Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving everyone came to St. George. It was nice for us to not have to travel with the kids and I think I am discovering that I love being the hostess! Not that I do much other than provide a place to sleep, but I just love having everyone around. We had the actual Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents house so luckily I wasn't in charge of the whole thing...just the thought of me doing the turkey by myself immediately stresses me out. We had so much fun staying up late, playing lots of games, eating lots of food, and doing lots of shopping. And whats great is that they will all be back in a few weeks for Christmas! Yay!

My mom really wanted to take a quick family picture. Bless her little heart for even trying...this is the best we got.

And I thought I would try to get one of my kids while they were all dressed at the same time (usually at least one seems to be naked) and of course it didn't work out:(

And just to remember what I have been thinking about this month:
While visiting teaching we talked about President Monson's talk on gratitude. I guess I must be complaining a lot about my kids lately because I have had so many people tell me to be grateful for this stage, because I will be so sad when it is over and really miss it. This of course is always coming from people whose kids are older and I think "you must not remember how hard this is!!!" I have three kids under the age of four, including a daughter who is a total diva, a son who is still being potty trained, and a newborn who I am up in the night with. So somedays it is really hard to be grateful and I find myself fantasizing about the day when they are all in school!! But then there are those moments that really do make it all worth it, as cheesy as that sounds. Evie is smiling now and it melts my heart, especially when we get her to full on laugh! When we hear Ella and Kash who sneak into each others room at night and we can hear them playing so dang cut together. And when Ella says something so smart or Kash says "I lub you mom" for no reason. So I realize that I really do need to be more grateful, and live in the moment and try to remember these sweet moments (as rare as they might seem some days). Who knows, maybe I will look back and smile at the thought of me cleaning poop out of batman underwear and hosing Kash down in the backyard? I just don't know.