Happy Hallowgivingmas!

So, this update is a long time coming. I thought I would cover the last two holidays and a little bit of the present holiday all at once. Well, we have been kind of busy for the last few months. Matt and I got to go out to a nice steak dinner for Matt's birthday. It was great! (Thanks Ben & Kim for making it possible!) The place was decorated with lots of random antiques that had been collected over the years and lots of Tiffany lamps. It was a really fun place. We were way overdressed.

Halloween was fun. In my family, there are several birthdays in the month of October and one in November, so we decided to have big family birthday party on Halloween and then all of the grandkids went out trick-or-treating. Beckett really got into it this year. The first house we went to he saw a Hershey bar and grabbed that and started to eat it right away. At the second house he let us put the candy in the bag though. He had a great time. Anabelle survived, too. Unfortunately, no one gave her candy, so that meant that Matt and I didn't get any candy either. We had an easy time getting Belle into her Minnie Mouse costume, Beckett on the other hand... I think he thinks that his giraffe costume was a real giraffe or something because he refused to put it on or even let it get too close to him. So, the only thing he would let us put on him was a baseball outfit. (He was twins with his cousin Grant and we didn't even plan it)

A week after Halloween, my sister, Christa, and I "got out of Dodge" and ran away to San Diego. It was a fun trip and we survived driving in California. We stayed in a nice hotel and just relaxed. They had the coolest pools at the hotel.

There were water slides that emptied into two of the pools and a sand pit off to the side of another (I think that is to make up for the fact that it isn't located off of a beach). Everywhere we went, peopled just loved Anabelle. We got so many comments on how cute she is. I have to admit that they are right. She is a pretty cute baby (and these pictures prove it). We also did some shopping, went to the beach, did mud masks in our hotel room, and got a massage. It was a lot of fun. (Thanks Mom and Dad!)

For Thanksgiving we went to Nate and Jana's in Colorado. We had a blast. We only wish we could have spent more time out there when Eric and Julia were there. The food was amazing and we played some really fun games, Speed Scrabble and a card game called "Rage". It is a lot like Trump (or Trumps, depending on which family is reading this) but has wild cards that change the trump color and different things like that. We also played Mexican Train, a domino game. That was a lot of fun too. Here is a picture of said Mexican train game:

I have to toot my horn here a little bit. I beat Nate at Speed Scrabble. This is no small feat. Speed Scrabble is where you have two piles of 12 or 14 scrabble tiles and then you flip over one of the piles and try to make as many words as fast as you can using all your tiles. Two letter words count too. Then, once you have used all your tiles, you say "Pick" and everybody flips over one tile from the second pile and that continues until all of the tiles are gone. Whoever gets rid of their tiles first wins. I think Nate won all of the times we played but maybe two or three and I was one of those. I know I just got lucky in my tile drawing, but I will take it. Thank you, Nate and Jana, for letting us come and feeding us so well.

Matt, during all this time, has been busy doing school work. He has made two short films (very short - they are both only about a minute long) with his friend, Kevin, for one of his classes. You can look them up on Youtube.com. Search for "Boxing for Keeps" and "That was not easy - Dial a Climber". Check 'em out. (I would put them on the blog, but it took so stinkin' long in my last blog to figure out how to get those videos on here that I just don't want to even try this time. I am not a tech geek at all. Plus, Matt will be adding them to his silly personal playground blog later...should he ever get around to it.) He finished up his finals this week. We are so glad to have his undivided attention again. And, if all goes according to plan, Matt will be all done with school this time next year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Another thing happening this week is that Mom Jacob is staying with us. We have made some yummy cookies (no, not my famous ones. We are making those this weekend), we have gone shopping, played games, and watched some of our new favorite movies, "Lars and the Real Girl" and "Penelope". We are hoping to see the lights on Temple Square while she is here and some other fun things, but mostly we are planning on just bumming around and just enjoying her company before she leaves on her mission to Melbourne, Australia.

Last you heard, Anabelle was starting to crawl. Well, she is full on crawling now and even "runs" away from me when she shouldn't be eating something she has found on the floor. She is pretty quick too. She loves us to help her walk around the house. She will be standing up to something and will cry until one of us comes and helps her walk to wherever it is she wants to go. I will not be surprised if she is walking by the end of January. She is getting more and more of a personality each day. She gets mad at Beckett if he does not share with her something that she really wants (usually food). She is still really good at pouting and looks at us to make sure we can see her bottom lip sticking out. She loves to clap and now expects us to clap for everything that she does. I think she is finally getting solids down (pun). She hasn't really liked baby food until this month. If she had her way, she would skip baby food all together and go right to whatever the rest of us are eating. We added dry cereal to her diet and she seems content for now.

Beckett got a haircut while I was in San Diego. Due to his hatred of haircuts, my mom cut it really short. He looked like a recovering cancer patient. It has grown in now and looks much better now. Although, on the Christmas card that we are sending out, he and Anabelle look almost like the same kid at first glance. I should have put him in a different color from Belle.

I have been to see "Twilight" twice now and I still love it. I give it a B+. I thought they did a decent job of adabting the book to movie. It isn't the greatest movie ever made, but I think it is cute and enjoyed it lots. I am getting excited for Christmas this year. It will be a lot of fun with Beckett. I have really been thinking on the true meaning of Christmas this year. In Relief Society last week, the member of the presidency that gave the lesson talked about how the wise men gave Christ gifts, and today, we give gifts to everybody but Christ. She then challenged us to give a gift to the Savior. It can be not gossiping as much, living more Christ-like, being more charitable, etc. I am taking that challenge and I encourage each of you to do it too. She gave us a little while stalking to put in a little piece of paper that we write down our gift on. You don't have to do that, but I am sure writing it down somewhere is a good idea.

Well, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a fun New Years. We love you all!