Thanksgiving was fantastic. We did the traditional teppanyaki dinner the night before with Steve and then went to the BYU game. Thanksgiving morning I went on beautiful hike near Deer Creek with the Watkins and our dogs. Camden and Carter came. The fog of the lake was gorgeous.
I got assigned my traditional fruit platter and this year green bean casseroles as well.
We went down to Spring Lake to Jennifer’s for Thanksgiving. The kids played games with their cousins until late into the evening. Then the Sunday following, our whole family took up the entire sacrament meeting. We spoke about gratitude. Everyone did a fantastic job. All the kids were actually pretty excited about it. Liv introduced the family and told why she was grateful for everyone. Camden talked about thanksgiving and how he knows God has given him all his blessings and listed them and why he is grateful for them. He wrote the whole thing basically by himself and did a fantastic job. Carter tweaked a talk he had recently used in primary and talked about how he is grateful for family history and eternal families. He talked about some of the family history activities we did this summer on family search as part of the ward challenge. He got to speak about his Grandma who recently passed and some of his favorite memories of her. He also wrote the majority of the talk himself with a little help from Dad. Then all the kids sang a Beautiful song called Thankful by Shawna Edwards. I then spoke about the healing power of gratitude. I was worried the kids hadn’t taken enough time and tried to add a few minutes on and ended up speaking for almost 20 minutes and leaving only like 5 minutes for Derek to speak who gave a wonderful talk about having gratitude despite our circumstances. He shared some stories from his mission and how the Filipino people though often living in poverty were some of the happiest most grateful people he knew. I think the ward really enjoyed the meeting. The kids got loads of compliments. Steve was of course there to watch and support us all. Derek sat down in the audience and said our boys looked so mature and couldn’t help but think about how it’s not far off for them to be giving mission farewell addresses.
We went down to Spring Lake to Jennifer’s for Thanksgiving. The kids played games with their cousins until late into the evening. Then the Sunday following, our whole family took up the entire sacrament meeting. We spoke about gratitude. Everyone did a fantastic job. All the kids were actually pretty excited about it. Liv introduced the family and told why she was grateful for everyone. Camden talked about thanksgiving and how he knows God has given him all his blessings and listed them and why he is grateful for them. He wrote the whole thing basically by himself and did a fantastic job. Carter tweaked a talk he had recently used in primary and talked about how he is grateful for family history and eternal families. He talked about some of the family history activities we did this summer on family search as part of the ward challenge. He got to speak about his Grandma who recently passed and some of his favorite memories of her. He also wrote the majority of the talk himself with a little help from Dad. Then all the kids sang a Beautiful song called Thankful by Shawna Edwards. I then spoke about the healing power of gratitude. I was worried the kids hadn’t taken enough time and tried to add a few minutes on and ended up speaking for almost 20 minutes and leaving only like 5 minutes for Derek to speak who gave a wonderful talk about having gratitude despite our circumstances. He shared some stories from his mission and how the Filipino people though often living in poverty were some of the happiest most grateful people he knew. I think the ward really enjoyed the meeting. The kids got loads of compliments. Steve was of course there to watch and support us all. Derek sat down in the audience and said our boys looked so mature and couldn’t help but think about how it’s not far off for them to be giving mission farewell addresses.
