Los Valles

Omar’s family held with tradition and gathered at our house for Thanksgiving this year. It was lots of fun, and super crazy. We were so glad they came! There were games, motorcycles, dancing, laughing, hard work, and some nasty Thanksgiving food.

Omar’s dad was a huge help with some of the projects we’ve been putting off forever. They stripped ugly cabin siding off the shed and replaced most of the wood for the roof. Grandpa Luis was so patient and cute with the little boys, letting them help pull out and hammer in nails. Daddy even got them their own, real, little hammers. And when Fernando arrived later in the day he had brought a whole little tool set. Needless to say, I had some happy tool loving boys in my back yard!

The boys also dug out my ugly hedges in the front! Yay! And that was no easy task getting them out of the hard desert dirt! I helped a little, I think, but I’m not even sure I was that helpful. My little guys had lots of fun trying to dig with everyone and loading stuff in the truck. Isaiah was so cute trying to take his wheelbarrow up the ramp just like daddy. He’s at the stage I love where he wants to do everything just like daddy. Helaman has gotten a lot more independent, but Isaiah is in the hero-worship stage. And that combined with his belief there is nothing in this world he can’t do, makes for some crazy stories! (Like the time he tried to ride his three-wheeler up the ramp after watching dad and Fernando load motorcycles–never look away from the crazy monkey!)

Meanwhile Llael and I were spending the day making batches and batches of jam and jelly. We made several batches of pomegranate jelly and one of Grandma Ruth’s special apricot jam. We had completely run out, so I’m really grateful for all the Gridley fruit that came down to Ridgecrest this season! Helaman enjoys the fruits of our labors every day, and tries to talk me into peanut butter and jelly for every meal some days.

The real story of Thanksgiving, for me, however, was the dinner itself. It would be hard to imagine dinner turning out worse as a matter of fact! We had 3 times too much salt in our turkey brine, so it was suuuuper salty. As if that wasn’t bad enough, one of the times I shut the timer off after basting, I actually shut the oven off. Hours the later the turkey wasn’t cooking, because the oven was completely cold! It never did get done all the way, bleeding as Omar carved it. We just served the pieces on the outside that had gotten to temperature. Not that it was delicious anyway! Meanwhile, I had started the potatoes to get done when the turkey should have gotten done had the oven been on, so I left them soaking in the water for hours! Luckily, it was nothing a lot of butter and cream couldn’t cover up. The rolls were undercooked. I forgot to put the pecans in the topping on my sweet potato casserole, so added them after it was cooked, but they just fell off. And in the flurry of finishing everything I accidentally dumped the milk into the gravy instead of the potatoes where I meant to dump. The gravy was so salty from being made from turkey drippings it didn’t much matter anyway at that point! Hopefully, everyone wasn’t too grossed out to ever come back…

Here are some pictures of all the fun, and I can’t easily remove the ones already in the post, so just ignore those!

My brother Michael and his wife Tara welcomed a precious new little baby girl into the world on October 15th. It was one of my saddest days being away from home. We had so much fun being friends with them on Hepworth Row. I was coaching Helaman’s soccer teams, and we couldn’t leave town for a few weeks, but we were off for Gridley as fast as we could go, which ended up being the second week in November. The timing worked out great. Omar only had to take one day off because of Veteran’s Day, Caysley was getting blessed that Sunday and Christopher was made an Elder, and we got to be there for all the fun!

We had a lot of fun with our family that we sure do miss a lot!

Grandma had delicious cinnamon roles for us, and my boys happily dug right in. Who says these two don’t eat?

They had lots of fun picking Grandma’s garden, too. In fact they talked about the most out of the whole trip when we got back, and it still comes up sometimes. We sure miss little Miss Ava, too. What’s better in life than cousins?

We got to hang out with Ava Belle a lot, and had a blast with her. She has so much personality in that little girl body. We played at Grandma’s, at the park, in Chico. I was worried she wouldn’t remember us, but we only had fun! Isn’t she cute?

And I got a lot of good Aunt time in with Caysley, too. I loved holding that little baby girl. I’m so sad we’re so far away, still! She is perfect in every way, and I would have loved to just steal her away and bring her home with me!

We had a lot of fun playing with the other side of our family, too. These two are so funny, as soon as they get to Bompa Luis’ house, it’s straight to the balls, and it can’t be put await as long as they are there. Grandpa and Jelly are such good sports with all the craziness and noise, and they love being at their house.

Can you tell he was having fun? Helaman is such a silly bug lately. Which is usually funny and sometimes drives me crazy (like bedtime!). Good thing he is so cute!

The only bad part of the trip was when we went to Bagel Works to meet Michael for lunch in Chico. As Isaiah was walking by one of the pictures on the wall he bumped, knocking one off the wall higher up. It fell and cut his head pretty badly and shattered glass every where. It was so heart breaking! We were sitting in the street cleaning his head with a water bottle while he cried, trying to make sure there was no glass in the cut. Sometimes it’s so sad to be a mom!

Funny Isaiah at the big events on Sunday! He kept making this face the whole trip when he would say “cheese!” We’ve been working on smiling with big eyes trying to lose this face, but I’m glad it’s recorded for posterity.

All the Melchizedek Priesthood boys. I am so grateful to have the priesthood in my family. It’s made all the difference in our lives. And I’m so happy and excited for Michael and Christopher. We are so blessed!