Our Thanksgiving adventure

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays!! I love cooking and baking with the children the day before so we don't have much besides cooking the turkey on Thursday.  We usually have a grateful tree.  Each of us writes things we are grateful on leaves and we glue them on the tree throughout the month of November.  I love concentrating on being grateful, good food and family.  This year Rebecca couldn't come home so we sent her money to buy what she wanted to eat for Thanksgiving.  We missed her, and are so glad she is coming for Christmas.  We skyped with Grandpa and Grandma in Scotland on their mission.  Being able to keep in touch with them while they are gone is one of the many blessings I am grateful for.  Modern communication is amazing!!

We had Brother Ogburn over for dinner and enjoyed his company.  We had plenty of delicious food.  We made 5 kinds of pies and all the other yummy Thanksgiving foods.  Julia and Emma look forward to pink jello salad all year because we only make it at Thanksgiving.  It was a wonderful day!!

Friday we  drove to Ashton to be with the Waite family. It was fun to see Grandma Karan and Grandpa JimMolly and Scott, Gerry and Valerie, Blaine, Candice and the nieces and nephews.  The children went sledding down Grandma's hill and had a great time together.  There were lots of games played, good conversation and catching up with each other. It was wonderful!!!

We left early Saturday afternoon to get ahead of a coming storm.  It was a great plan, but it didn't work out quite like we planned.  About 5 miles outside of Bozeman, Montana the van made a very loud popping noise and got very loud.  We didn't know what was wrong and decided against heading into a storm not being sure the van would keep running.  We got a recommendation of a mechanic in Bozeman and left the van there.  We called a friend in the ward with a vehicle big enough to bring all of us home.  Julia and Bethany had stayed at home so we asked them to drive the Clark's suburban and come to get us.  We were 200 miles from home so we had quite a wait in Bozeman. Brother Clark decided to drive himself rather than have Bethany and Julia try to make the trip. The girls were very glad they didn't have to drive.  We walked a little over  a mile to Walmart in Bozeman and waited there.  You can find all kinds of things to buy when you spend close to two hours walking around Walmart.  The children did really well and didn't ask for too much.  We were just glad to have somewhere to wait and that Brother Clark was willing to come and rescue us.  It will be a Thanksgiving trip the children won't forget.  The funny thing is that when we drove through Bozeman on our way to Idaho the children said not to stop there because that is where the van breaks down.  We told them that was Riverton where we had problems before and it was fine to stop in Bozeman.  We should have listened to them.  We got home about midnight instead of 7:00 like we had planned, but we made it and felt grateful to be home.  It was an adventure!!!