Thanksgiving in Park City

We arrived in Park City the night before Thanksgiving and jumped right into the festivities.

Great Grandma Nancy with her first great grandbaby, Quincy.

The meal...

Andy, Ben and I joined the kids table and had a chance to talk to Zach.

Cute pic of Abby and Grandma!

Jenny hosted a root beer tasting.

We ended up with about 15 different root beers.

Here are our two bar tenders, Mike and Preston.

Everyone tasting and rating...

Jenny and Mike tallied the results and it ends up that the Bryans don't have super sophisticated palates!

I can't remember the exact brand that won but it was a super cheap/off brand...walmart or shasta or something :)

The next day the ladies all went off to celebrate a bride to be in the family.

Ellie was going to be getting married the week before Christmas so for those of us that aren't close to Idaho Falls, we had an informal, family brunch at The Homestead in Midway.

We all crowded around one table (blurry, but cute pic) and enjoyed a yummy meal.  We also really enjoyed our conversation.  We had Ellie tell us about her story with Eli, her fiance, and then Nancy told us some fun stories about her courtship with Merill.

On our way out we stopped in The Crater which is a geothermal spring where people go scuba diving.

It was pretty cool!  I had never seen it before.

 It was a great Thanksgiving weekend!

Driving home we stopped in South Weber and visited Andy's grandpa...the kids' only living great grandparent now.  We hadn't seen him for so long.  It was wonderful to visit with him and enjoy his humor!

Megan's Baby Shower/Birthday Party

My workout buddies and I had a baby shower/birthday party for our cute trainer who is expecting her first baby.  She is the one that tutored me a year ago in my beginning cookie stages.  I suggested the Mommy to Bee/Bee Day theme since I've always wanted to do a bee themed shower and Megan's birthday was that same week.

I had fun designing a bee cookie set!

I used a stencil to create these...

...and a projector for the font on this beehive.

I also made some lemon/poppyseed cakes with some bee pans I have :)

We met at Chanelle's beautiful home and had a waffle bar (I bought a little, hexagon waffle iron for the event), treats and wonderful company!

Megan is the cutest little Momma to be!

We all pitched in and gave her a baby monitor that she wanted.

Just a few more shots of the setup...

Jennie made the cutest, yummiest, little cake!

This is the crew...Karen had to leave a bit early so we are missing her in this pic.

I sure love all these women (including Karen :)

 

Pinners!

One of my workout friends alerted us to the fact that Pinner's conference was coming up and suggested we could go as a group.  One was already going with another friend, but there were four others of us who were interested.  One ended up getting sick the day before so it ended up being only three of us traveling down together.

We got there in the early afternoon of the first day and went to several classes...sometimes together, sometimes we split up, depending on interests.  One of my friends had a daughter there with a booth so she was off and on helping her with that.

There were too many classes that I wanted to go to that overlapped so if one was a craft I would go get in line and get the kit to make on my own and then go to the other class.  It worked well for the most part :)

Probably my most favorite class was, surprise!, a cookie class :)

I follow The Cookie Bank (Justine Banks) on instagram so it was so fun to go sit and learn from her.  I ended up on the front row!  She was the cutest lady and had the sweetest personality.  She told us she would be appearing on the Food Network's Christmas Cookie Challenge in a few weeks.  It was seriously super fun to be in her class!

One of the kits I picked up was from my favorite barn quilt lady, Tweetle Dee Designs.

She is seriously such a sweetheart.  We enjoyed chatting for a bit and when I asked for a selfie her husband pointed out that we had the same phone case...which isn't a really common one so it was pretty amazing!

We got some really good Thai food that night and stayed in a hotel close by.

The next morning we got to the even center (which is seriously huge and had hundreds of booths to look at) and went around to our classes.  We met up with our other friend who had come separately and got some great seats for the final class...Matt Townsend.  He is a therapist and seriously hilarious!  I had heard him speak before but it had been quite a while.

He had us laughing so hard and it was a great way to end the experience.

It was a fun, quick girls' trip that we hope to repeat next year...hopefully with a few more of us!

Josh Goes to the Temple

Early in November Josh was able to go to the temple and receive his endowment.

It was a really special day!

Mom and Dad, Merill and Nancy, Jo, T and James were all able to come.

It was neat having everyone there.

I'm so proud of Josh and his decisions.

He has grown into such a fine young man and I love him!

A couple of odds and ends...

In our new ward (we were rearranged in October and for the first time, with all of the boundary changes over the years, we are no longer a part of the 5th ward...we are now in the 15th:) there is a great big fluffy service dog.  Her name is Avalondee...there's a story behind that name...but, everyone loves seeing her as part of our worship on Sundays :)  I just had to catch a couple of pictures of her in Relief Society.

Also, this was such a cool bug that Abby painted for Art class.  It is called a Picasso beetle and is a real thing!  She did such a great job with it...I just love the colors!