Black Friday & other Thanksgiving adventures.

We left for Logandale Nevada Wednesday around 4pm. We decided to stop and eat in Nephi and we found a great little family restaurant called Lisa's Country Kitchen. The food was GREAT!!! I would recommend it to anyone. I ordered a scone that was bigger than my head, it was so yummy! After that the kids slept a little in the car and we arrived at my Aunts at 10:30ish Logandale time. Elese had a hard time falling asleep the first night but she was great after that and would even take her naps all by herself in the "jungle room". My aunt is very dedicated with her decor and one of her guests rooms looks like a jungle, we love getting to stay in that room.

Thursday morning my niece and Sister-in-law and I all went for a walk to get a little exercises before the big meal. Steven took Max on an "adventure". It is easy to find an adventure in Logandale. My Aunt and Uncles back yard is a desert complete with caves, hills to climb, sticks, tons of red sand & rock, tarantulas, and sometimes even quick sand. Max loved it!!! Later in the day Max went on an ATV ride with Uncle Blake and he had a blast, unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me.

(Max in my aunts back yard)

We ate Thanksgiving dinner at the Stake Center so we could have more room. We ate on plates that had a picture of a Turkey on it. Elese loved the plates and would say, "I eat the turkey" and pretend to eat.

She also enjoyed crawling around after my cousins babies and saying, "Look mommy, baby running fast!!!" The rest of the festivities included the Bryce Hardy variety show for my cousin Bryces 40th birthday which I participated in and sang Adilades Lament. The evening ended with Steven dropping his pie on Eleses head and us driving around from house to house collecting things that we needed for Friday nights dinner that we were in charge of cooking.

That night I got some food prepared for the next days meal and then headed out to Las Vegas to spend the night at my friend Amys. I borrowed my moms GPS so that I could find her house but it wasn't much help. I was no more than 3 miles from her house when the GPS said, "Turn right on Lone Mountain Road" so I turned right. There was major fog and I couldn't see more than 10-15 feet in front of me so I followed the GPS blindly, suddenly the road became very bumpy and the only other vehicle on the road was a construction vehicle with a yellow flashing light. Then the GPS said, "Turn left on Cliff road" because of the fog I cautiously moved the car over to the left side of the road to find a Cliff, not cliff road, but an actually cliff. There I sat alone on Lone Mountain road about to drive off of a cliff. I continued on looking for an actual road to turn on but found nothing so I headed back down to the 215 and called Amy, the GPS recalculated and guided me there safely. It turned out that Lone Mountain road was nothing but a gravel pit, stupid GPS.

Amy and I planned our attack and went to sleep. It is rare that I can sleep well in a strange place but I felt very comfortable in her home and I loved her head board. :) We woke up at 4:30 am, ate a banana and headed to Walmart. We arrived about 5 min. after they opened so we avoided the crowd. Then we went to another Walmart because they didn't have something I wanted, Toys R Us, Target and 2 Circut Citys. Toys R Us was by far the worst! The way they had the register lines set up made it look like there was no line at all so you would walk up to the front thinking that you had no wait at all and then they would send you to the back of the store to the real line. Fortunately the wait was only about 15 min. but there were people leaving because the line appeared to be at least an hour long. It was bad planning on their part.

After our shopping we picked up Amys cute baby girl, Ava, and went to breakfast at the Original Pancake Factory. I ordered an omelet that was, once again, bigger than my head, it's no wonder I gained 2 lbs. It was very yummy. I had a great time with Amy and I'm sorry that I didn't take more pictures because I bet this blog entry is very boring.

I headed back to my aunts, rested for about an hour and then started working on dinner. Elese was asleep and Steven, Max and my nephew Logan were on another adventure. We almost sent out a search party because they were gone for over 4 hours!!! Max and Logan did not want to come home. I cooked all night and then we watched Nacho Libra, which was highly recommended by my cousins, I didn't get into it so I went to bed.

Saturday we packed up our things went on a quick adventure while Elese slept....

...and headed into Vegas. We were very excited to go check out the M&M factory and Steven did some filming for his family documentary. We saw the house he had lived in, the high school he went to and of course the temple that his sister was married in 15 years ago.

This is the kids on the temple grounds.

We went into the city to check out the M&M factory and I do NOT recommend this. I assumed that it would be like the Jelly Belly factory, tours, discounted Jelly beans...Well the M&M factory is four floors of stuff you can buy, t-shirts, m&m's, m&m dispensers, anything you could imagine. Max wanted an m&m dispenser but I told him it was to much money and that we would get some m&ms. They have all different colors of m&ms so I let Max choose the ones he wanted. Max and I went to the bathroom while Steven checked out. We came back to find Steven and he was not very happy! The m&m's cost us $20!!! I looked at the receipt and they were $11.99 a lb?!!!???!!! I could have bought a 2 lb bag at Smiths for $3! Never again!

Then Steven filmed some more stuff in the city and the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. While he and Max filmed that Elese and I watched airplanes take off & land from the Executive Airport, this was defiantly the highlight of our Vegas experience. It was about 5:30 (Utah time) when we left Las Vegas to head for home, it was going to be a late night, until Elese threw up all over the car! We cleaned up at a gas station and prayed about whether we should stay another night at my aunts or make the drive home. We decided to stay and called around to get our church callings taken care of and we are glad we did. Max woke up at 4am throwing up. Sunday morning we were finally on the road with several stops on the side of the road for Max the throw up.

We got home around 6:30pm and bathed the kids and put them to bed. We woke up twice in the night, once for Max and once for Elese. So far this morning they have been ok but I'm staying home from work to take care of them, and because I'm not feeling too great either. So there you have it, our Thanksgiving adventures.