We had a great Thanksgiving this year but I have no pictures to prove it. I had my camera with me but didn't take any pictures. We drove down to Fayette on Wed, spent Wed night at the Gunnison Inn and had a great meal with all of my brothers and sisters and their families, my parents, Grandma and Grandpa Bartholomew, Grandpa Christiansen and aunts, uncles and cousins from both sides of the family. It's always great to see people you don't get to see very often. After dinner some of the crowd went to get Christmas trees. I stayed behind to visit.

Thursday night we went to Salt Lake so we would be ready to get up bright and early for black Friday! We missed some of the great deals by not being there right when the stores opened but Darren went with his Dad and sister and got the most important things. Good job, Darren! We spent the rest of the weekend with Darren's family except for a bridal shower for Kat.

Sunday, when we were driving home, Darren showed me a facebook message he had received from our neighbor. It said something to the effect that a pipe had broken in our back yard and water was spurting everywhere so a different neighbor had called the city and the city had turned off our water. We were stressed out the rest of the way home wondering if we were going to have water and, more importantly, if water would be all over the basement. As soon as we got home I ran in the house and checked out the basement and Darren checked out the backyard. Nothing was in the house, thank goodness. In the backyard were some cool ice formations along the fence and paths in the garden where the water had run but that was all you could see. Apparently we didn't winterize the sprinkler system like we should have and the expensive back flow valve we had to special order broke. Something to deal with in the spring.

Here are a few pictures Kevin took while we decorated for Christmas:

Me putting strings on the new ornaments

Ethan putting the star on the tree. You can tell the Christmas bulbs were put on by kids. I rearranged a little after we were done.

Jacob "helping" by playing with the decorations.