Hannah's Baptism/Thanksgiving

We had such a fun extended weekend for Thanksgiving this year. There was much to be grateful for!! Hannah decided to wait a week to do her baptism so she could do it over Thanksgiving weekend. Both sets of Grandparents, Aunt Wendi and Uncle Ryan and their kids, and Uncle Brandon and Aunt Ayca got to come! It was so fun to have them all. I really loved my mom's description of the whole weekend, so I copied and pasted her email to those who weren't able to make it in my family. It follows at the bottom....

Brandon and Ayca :)

Abi and Rachel

(From my Mom) Hannah's Baptism was the highlight (followed closely by gramma's scooter-skill display, but I'll save that for later). Hannah was a beautiful young lady dressed in white with a smile from ear to ear. I only got teary during the opening song, during my own talk, during the song by wendi, Rachel, Ellie, Joey, and David, during sue's talk, during Derrick's confirmation of Hannah, and during the closing song. Other than that, i was in complete control. Thanks, hannah, for a wonderful day.

Another very fun time was in sauna after swimming in a freezing pool at the hotel (they don't heat the pools in the south). We found two sauna's and cranked up the heat. In the girls side, we started to sing (thanks to Ellie) and took turns leading in fun songs.

Close to this was the charades game on Friday night. David's renditions of 'Dash', 'spiderman', and 'up' were strangely similar but cute. And Gramma and Grampa Whiting as Snowwhite and the Prince doing the kiss scene was worth staying up for.

Another fun time was at night Thurs night it was Hannah and Rachel who slept with grammy and pops (we had a pull out couch in our hotel room), Friday night it was Joey and Elizabeth, and Sat night it was Sean and Elizabeth (while Hannah Joey and Rachel went to Sue and Waynes' room). In the morning we would go to breakfast at Mickey dee's and then get donuts to bring home to everyone. Since we couldnt' do that on Sunday morning, Sean got his McDonalds fix sat night. They love jumping on hotel beds.

Thanksgiving dinner was actually done on Friday so Brandon and Aycha (spelling wrong) could be there. Everything was wonderfully good but the turkey got overdone...about opposite of becky's, which looked delicious, beekers. The weather was nice and pleasantly warm Thursday and Friday. Saturday and sunday were very very cold. Even your mother froze. Flights were very un eventful, which is great! No bad weather, no long lines, no big delays. so all in all a very fun time. except that everyone wasn't there.

ok ok ok - the scooter incident. I can now claim that I can scooter down a hill , without using the brakes at all (I forgot they existed), stay balanced going over bumpy cement, keep my composure while coming to the end of the hill and driveway, hit the grass while throwing the scooter off to the right and flinging my body to the left, then landing in the grass, not even doing a summersault, and only coming out with a scraped elbow and a bruised ego.... I'm very very thankful I had Angie's winter jacket on or there may have been more scraping. I only wish we had had the camera rolling so i could win $100,000 on AFV. oh well, maybe next time. You can get eye witness accounts from derrick or Sean. And they tell the story much better than I do.

We did the cousin's Christmas present exchange since we wont be together for Christmas this year. All 3 little boys got a different type of nerf shooter gun, so you can imagine the bullets whizzing by all weekend. If that doesn't scream fun here are some more pictures to show you just how much fun we had all weekend long. Like I said, there was lots to be thankful for...