Happy Thanksgiving Week

It has been a fun and busy week filled with the normal "suspects" (that would be housecleaning, too much food and game playing) and some other highlights.  We will start with Monday and move forward:

Monday:  I headed to Salt Lake and spent the day with my dad starting on some family history and genealogy projects.  It was awesome and I hope to make it a monthly tradition.  All Gibersons are certainly invited to join with us.  I will let you know the dates.  :)

Monday evening Jena and I went with some friends to see the "Wizard Of Oz" which was being presented by a high school in Ogden (Gary had to help with another Special Olympics Bowling league at the bowling alley).  It was good and Jena and Kaitlyn really enjoyed it.  I was amazed by the dog that played Toto.  He was darling.

Tuesday:  My run around and doing projects day which I can't disclose on the blog since it isn't Christmas yet.  I am actually doing a project or two for Christmas.  It has been a long time since I have really done that.

Wednesday:  The "pick up pies and get ready for Thanksgiving Day"--The weather has been beautiful so we spent some time getting our yard ready for winter.  In many ways it is the best we have done for a long time (I think that we have mentioned that yard work and me have a love-hate relationship---I love it when I want to do it but it can be a burden when I don't.)

However the big news for Wednesday was that Jena had her first day of work at her job at the Syracuse bowling alley.  They approached us in the summer to see if we were interested in a job for her.  Some of the teenager staff had talked to the management and suggested it as Jena would often help them put away balls and clean up when she was there with Gary.  We said we were but she wasn't 16 yet.  She went through the process of application and interview and started Wednesday.  To start with she will work one day a week for 2 hours.  Gary or I will stay in the building to coach her if needed but the staff and management know her so well that it went great the first day.  Here she is heading in for her first day of work.

Heading in to work...
One of her jobs is cleaning and putting
away the bowling shoes....



Again, my apologies to Jessica (Lagoon), Scott (Painter's helper), Ben (Lagoon)
and Tosha (Jamba Juice)--if I had been blogging back then
and photos had been so available I would have totally
posted about your first jobs and taken pictures.

Thursday:   "Happy Thanksgiving"

I headed to Journey House in the morning to serve Thanksgiving Dinner to clients and their families of Davis Behavioral Health. 

We had a later dinner to accommodate our kids and even then Tosha and her boyfriend, Roark, only made it for a brief stop around 9 as she worked until 8 at Cracker Barrel.  Otherwise we had everyone else for dinner at 5 and also Gary's sister Vonette, her husband, Gary, and three of their children.

I saw lots of face book posts of beautiful tables of dishes and food.  Here is what I took a picture of:

After dinner was cleaned up, it was time for the real order of business:  Game playing.  Here we are playing Telestrations.  Jessica took a "cool" panoramic picture of all of us playing but I don't know how to get it from my text messages to my computer.

Brother bonding time away from the
crazy game players.  Scott did play for awhile
but it is not always his "cup of tea".

Roark and Tosha

No group shots but as a mom it is just fun to have all of your children in your house at the same time even if it is just for a brief moment.  I love all of these "peoples"  and so glad to have them in my life.

Friday: After a busy couple of days, I fell right to sleep on Thursday night only to wake up at three in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep.  I did laundry, worked on genealogy stuff, and emergency prep. stuff until about 8:30 a.m..  Then after breakfast, I headed back to bed for a couple of hours.  That doesn't happen to me very often.  It made Friday somewhat wasted day but I was grateful that I got so much stuff ready for emergency prep. because I am giving a presentation next week in Ward Counsel and my PowerPoint is mostly prepared. Nice!

We helped a neighbor move in the afternoon and then finally Gary and I watched a bit of football and took naps--another holiday classic.  We played games with Mom Hall that night after a taco dinner at Taco Time where we got a 10% discount and treats because they knew Jena.

Saturday:  Special Olympics bowling for Jena and Gary.  I worked on some computer projects for Church and for an activity we are doing for Special Olympics.  Then I headed over to the bowling alley for our Saturday post-bowling.  My new bowling shoes had arrived so I needed to try them out.  I am now official with my own locker at the bowling alley (at three dollars a season--Gary said it was worth the cost.)

Still wearing my other shoe when I took this picture...so corny I know.

Gary and Jena headed over to help with Christmas lights at Grandma's house while I ran a few errands.   After an unexpected trip to the ER to check on our brother-in-law who had to make a visit there (turned out to only be a urine infection but they were worried about other things.), Gary and I headed down to BYU with our dear friends, Hal and Jolynn Beckstrand to attend a BYU basketball game.  It was a very fun game which BYU won.  It was great to catch up with them.  It always makes me wonder why we don't get together more often.  They have been friends for over 30 years.  And of course, no pictures.  I am going to make it a goal to get pictures of these sweet friends(and all of the rest of you) which have been such a blessing in our lives throughout the years and will continue to be in the eternities.

And that is a wrap for the week!!! Hope yours was great as well.