Now for the obligatory Thanksgiving update. As usual, we spent the day before Thanksgiving making stuffing with Brodi's side of the family. Ashton stuffing consists of bread, sage and butter and it is fabulous. The kids love helping and the adults love snacking on it. It is generally a quieter affair with Brodi's side of the family, but we always have a great time.
We spent Thanksgiving with Brodi's family and then that evening we drove to our family ranch down in Central Utah,
Castle Valley Outdoors. This has been a family tradition to go down the ranch for Thanksgiving weekend for well over a decade now. It is located just outside of Emery (about 45 minutes from Price). It is a working ranch as well as an executive retreat ranch so the accomodations are fabulous. There is the lodge which has 9 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms...then there are 3 apartments in a house each with its own bathroom and then there is another house with 3 bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms. Plenty of room to handle all of us, which by the size of our family is pretty impressive. The pic on the left is during the summer...while the pic on the right is from late November.
The Thanksgiving dinner is crazy. Though my brother and his family couldn't come...my 3 sisters and their families as well as my other brother and his family - well, lets just say, that adds up to a whole lot of people.
We spent the days hiking, horseback riding, hiking some more, playing games (pool, cardgames, karaoke, campfire games and songs, etc.) and a lot of talking. I can safely say that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
Carter already received probably the best gift he could have asked for...a present from his school teacher that gives him a 'coupon' to turn in place of one homework assignment. He told me that maybe he would save it for 6th grade because homework is really hard in 6th grade. I let him know that it doesn't really work that way and that he will have to use this year.
How awesome is Amazon? I say that we buy 80% of our gifts thru Amazon. Pretty much anything you can think of, I have purchased thru Amazon (including toilet paper and tooth paste). Well, we ordered a poster for Carter's bedroom and we received it today. It came in a huge box. Take a look at the pic and you see the black tube on the far left of the box? That is the poster. The rest of the box is paper and nothing. I could have fit about 20 books into that box. Actually, I probably could have fit Carter and Becks into that box. Maybe even a small european car as well. Efficiency at its finest.
It is good to know that our legislature is hard at work. We all know that we have a State flower (no idea what it is), a State bird (seagull?) and other State things. Well, it is our lucky day because it appears that there is going to be a proposal to have a State gun. Yes, a State gun. How big of a trendsetter is the state of Utah? It appears that no other state has a State gun. Yay for us. Rep. Carl Wimmer has decided that he has nothing better to do than to propose a State gun and he has selected the Browning 1911 model (after Utah resident John Moses Browning who invented it). In a few years, I will be excited to also find out what our new State Cross-Bow is going to be. 
We spent Thanksgiving with Brodi's family and then that evening we drove to our family ranch down in Central Utah, Castle Valley Outdoors. This has been a family tradition to go down the ranch for Thanksgiving weekend for well over a decade now. It is located just outside of Emery (about 45 minutes from Price). It is a working ranch as well as an executive retreat ranch so the accomodations are fabulous. There is the lodge which has 9 bedrooms and 9 bathrooms...then there are 3 apartments in a house each with its own bathroom and then there is another house with 3 bedrooms and a couple of bathrooms. Plenty of room to handle all of us, which by the size of our family is pretty impressive. The pic on the left is during the summer...while the pic on the right is from late November.
The Thanksgiving dinner is crazy. Though my brother and his family couldn't come...my 3 sisters and their families as well as my other brother and his family - well, lets just say, that adds up to a whole lot of people.
We spent the days hiking, horseback riding, hiking some more, playing games (pool, cardgames, karaoke, campfire games and songs, etc.) and a lot of talking. I can safely say that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.
