Thanksgiving

 Whenever I load onto my blog from Sterling's laptop it does crazy things. I need to start using my computer again. But I like loading pictures onto his computer so I can airdrop them onto my phone for instagram. The struggle is real. So I thought some were missing, but now I think I have some repeats in here. 

I've already written about Hyrum Rasmussen, but I decided to fly to Utah for the funeral. It was a pretty rough couple of days. It was hard to see Clay and Amy and their kids. It was hard to see pretty much all the family members. But it was so wonderful in so many ways. It was wonderful to feel and hear the strength of the gospel and the plan of salvation from so many great people. It was wonderful to see how even though our family is so huge and sprawls all over North America, so many people came. And not even on their own--some of my cousins and aunts and uncles just called to see who of each family could come and the one person from each family that could piled into one van to drive a day to come. My cousin Mariah and I were talking about--there was such a strong feeling of connection and love and support and strength. It was exactly why I wanted to go and even though I couldn't even manage a word to Clay and Amy when I came up to them, I know they felt it and understood why we all came. It was more cousins than I had seen in 6 years since Sterling and I managed to go to Canada for a Rasmussen reunion. It was so comforting to know so many people would make such an effort for our extended family. Having 60 cousins makes it pretty crazy, but also pretty wonderful.

After that I got to stay for Thanksgiving. Part of that was bittersweet because watching all the little nieces and nephews running around just made me so sad that Ruthie and Will and Molly weren't running around with them! But it was so so good to see everyone.

Elena, Hailey, Anders, Kiersten

Jubal. This kid. I'm not sure my kids could handle this one. HA!

Jack, Eli, Sebastian

Swing dancing! My favorite! And just a little "ahhhh" at what a good dad Jared is!

Crazy Rook with these crazies!

Devaney and Harriet.

The BEST Thanksgiving FEAST ever!!!!

Seeing mom pitch is just about the most normal and solid memory in my life.

Lando and Oskar

Lindsay Ann had some pretty great photo bomb moments over the weekend. Haha.

Chez may just be the cutest little thing in the world.

Snapchat. It was all the rage over the weekend. Those kids know how to change their faces and voices and they all find it SOOOOOO hilarious.

Russ was fussy, with the time change and a cold. But that little Efraim--he was ALWAYS happy. And moving.

Lindsay Ann photo bomb. Lynnaea, Kiersten, Hailey, Miriam, Danica

All my cousins at the funeral.

All the nieces and nephews (minus two I think that we couldn't grab) at Thanksgiving.

At first Journey was really patient with Efraim slapping his arm against her. Mom was getting smiles out of everyone else.

Journey was still patient.

And then she was not so patient. So we moved Efraim. The problem persisted. Haha!

Journey (49), Russ (50), Sadie (51), Efraim (48)

This lasted for a second before Efraim smacked Russ and he started crying too. HAha.

All the adorable babies born this year! I love that we will always have so many cousins for our kids! And that Journey--she is not the youngest, she's older than Russ but she is a light weight!!! So cute!

We stayed up way too late (I'm still recovering) played too many games, talked and talked and talked, got my wedding ring cleaned at Needham's, set up the Christmas tree, and played games at the church all day long two days in a row. It was perfect. I did yoga with Kami, went running with Megan (and totally felt like a wuss because I was completely capable of keeping up but my knee was aching like it started to when I first started running but it has eased up since then) and it was BAD. I was limping for the next two days and standing up on the plane afterwards was awful. Baby Russ did amazing on both flights--on the way we had a connecting flight and it was iffy. Mostly because I was so nervous about the people beside us. But he slept on the redeye home the entire time. It would have been great if I could have held him and slept myself easier.

Huge shout out to Sterling who gave up his Thanksgiving with me so I could go. It was absolutely incredible that I could even go--Sterling would usually not be able to watch the kids like that, but with Thanksgiving break we were able to have Sister McMillan watch the kids a bit and then Sterling was able to do it the rest of the time. He held down the fort and it was standing when I got home--and even clean. Such a neat thing that it worked out like that. And I'm so grateful that he pushed me to go because I was really glad I did.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!