25 November 2012

We made our annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage this week to visit our families.  We started the week in Utah.  The City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake opened since our last visit.  Gibson liked the Christmas displays in Macy's store windows.  All the Christmas decorations were made of candy.  This giant ornament looked like a honeycomb topped with little candy bees wearing Santa hats.

The kids enjoyed playing in the children's section of the Church History Museum.  Here Gibson is pretending to fish with his cousin, Sasha.

We took a tour of Welfare Square while we were in Utah.  It was our first time to visit and we were very impressed by the very large capacity for welfare relief made possible by lots and lots of small individual contributions.

Welfare Square has a Deseret Industries store on site and Sofi enjoyed looking for thrift store treasures. She found 2 cute dresses and a couple of pairs of shoes.

Brandan's family had to go to work and school while we were visiting, but we enjoyed getting together with them in the evening.  One night we played a word game called Quiddler.  It's kind of a cross between Scrabble and poker.  The older cousins formed Team SASS and held their own against the adult teams.  In the photo are Sutton, Salem, Abe and Sofi.

The cousins also played a Michael Jackson dance off game on the playstation.  Our kids found they could get just as high a score dancing gangnam style as they did trying to copy Michael Jackson.

We drove up to Idaho on Wednesday.  Zina showed Sofi how to catch the chickens.

The best time to try to get a photo of the cousins on Thanksgiving was at the kids' table right before dinner.  Starting on the left, the photo shows Helen, Gibson, Sawyer, Hayden (his blond head is barely visible above Gibson's shoulder,) Sofi, Sy, Gage (Hayden's twin,) Abe and Zina.

We drove to Hailey on Friday with Sarah's family.  The weather was pleasantly warm for Idaho in November.  We went to a newly designated nature area along the Wood River.  This photo shows the Bow Bridge which was designed to look like a giant bow.   ~   We drove a lot in a week, but the opportunity to spend time with our well-loved family members made the time spent driving worth it.  Unfortunately we brought a little stomach bug with us.  By the time we got back home, Brandan was the only one of us to escape it.  Hopefully, we didn't spread it too far--we want to be welcome to come back next year!

An enormous arrow juts from the ground near the Bow Bridge.  Sarah's husband, Joe, machined the nock on the end of the arrow.

We also visited the Ernest Hemingway Memorial along Trail Creek.  Hemingway spent his summers in Ketchum, Idaho for over 20 years.