So, what’s been going on here?  Hmmmm…

Thanksgiving in Arizona with my parents and some of my siblings was divine.  We had all sorts of good food, including a cheesecake flan made by my very own Chef Colin.  My brother, Uncle Nephi, was a hit with Degen and Maggie as expected.  They just can’t stop talking about him and how wonderful he is.  We did some yard work together, which really means everyone else did yard work while I sat in the sun and kept them company.  I tried to lift a shovel of dirt once and immediately thought better of it with my very large belly and confused sense of balance (not to mention my healing sprained knee and very loose ligaments).  I got to see my sisters Ruth and Eliza pass their road tests and receive their driver licenses on the same day!  Yay Liza and Ruthie!  The test proctor was impressed with both of them and their driving skills.  We cooked and talked and my mom adjusted all of our backs (she’s a DO so she can do that stuff) and went to the park and the kids played with Grandma and Grandpa and their aunts and uncle.  It was really ideal, except that a couple of my sisters were missing (on the other side of the country for Thanksgiving this year). My mom cut Maggie’s hair for the first time (with bangs so she can see without pigtails) and trimmed Degen’s to a presentable length, then Mom and I went to a nearby salon and had our hair cut too.  I really love spending time with my mom, even when she has to study for her next qulifying exam part of the time.

Just before Thanksgiving I was officially diagnosed with gestational diabetes, and just after Thanksgiving I was put on a low dose of insulin overnight to take care of that stubborn fasting number, just like when I was pregnant with Maggie.  My current OB, Dr. Klekman in Santa Rosa, is wonderful and is very laid back about the whole thing while also vigilantly watching and listening for any possible problems.  The diabetes educator I’ve been assigned to, Astrid Ortega, is also friendly and relaxed, even when my kids are running around her office in circles.  I do have to have weekly consults with her, weekly appointments with Dr. K, weekly nonstress tests, an ultrasound at 36 weeks to check the baby’s size, and they want me to induce at 39 weeks if the baby doesn’t arrive before then.  They only have me testing my blood sugar four times a day (compared to seven plus when I was pregnant with Maggie) this time and I don’t have to check my ketones in the morning like I had to last time around.  It’s really helped me this time around to have relaxed providers who explain things slowly and listen to me when I have concerns.  It also helped to have some past experience to compare it to so I had some idea of what was coming.

Monday was Colin’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Colin!  We spent it, just the two of us, in Los Angeles at a training for a new product Colin was researching for his company.  It was the first time we’d been (relatively) childless overnight since Degen was born, so it was fun for me to have a little break from my “job.”  It really was amazing to have a room to myself and several meals in a row with no squeals of “Mommy Mommy Mommy!” requesting a refill of plate or cup.  Thanks so much to Sonja and Dick for the time off!

Wednesday was my sister Abby’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Abby!  We celebrated Colin’s birthday with his parents, sister Kim, and her boyfriend that evening.  I gave him 2G of RAM for his laptop, which he’s apparently very happy about but accidentally found out about in advance because I wasn’t sneaky enough to delete it from the history of my browser.  So, no surprise, but a good gift anyway.  Kim and Colin’s parents surprised us with an awesome gift–an overnight stay in Kim’s downtown San Francisco apartment after Christmas (hopefully before baby), complete with local restaurant reservations, spa treatments, babysitting, and touristy touring recommendations.  And I thought our LA trip was a vacation!  Definitely a surprise, and a very cool gift.  No, I wasn’t bothered that his birthday present was pretty much half for me (and neither was Colin, as far as I could tell).  Who needs Christmas presents when your husband gets birthday gifts like that?

Maggie chipped a tooth this week, so I’ve got to get her to a dentist to check and see if we can/should do anything about it in the near future.  We’ve got to finish off the Christmas shopping and do some seriousgift wrapping.  And I need to have the car serviced right away (of course the regular maintenance would fall on this month).  And our renters of our house in Utah gave notice, so we’ve got to find a new family to live there, preferably starting in January.  And I really should get appointments for teeth cleaning and doctor checkups and eye glasses for everyone in the family before the end of the year.  I don’t even know if that’s possible, but if it were it’d be ideal.

It’s always busy around here, even when I have no energy.  Actually, I’m usually okay as long as I don’t have to stand up for long or carry anything and I get a nap in the afternoon.  Any guesses on how often those three things coincide?

For a craft, we made turkeys with multi-colored feather tails.  There were sticks glued to the turkeys for handles and even Maggie enjoyed carrying hers around the library afterwords showing everyone how great turkeys are.  Thanks Miss Becky, we always enjoy your story times!

I wrote a seperate post here with a list of appropriate LDS music I could use and which are my favorite songs. 

For lesson ideas, I looked at the lds.org FHE manual under the topic "gratitude."  One of the lessons has you discuss Mosiah 2:19-24 and discuss ways to show gratitude to Heavenly Father and Jesus.  The story of the Ten Lepers (Luke 17) is also a good one when you're discussing gratitude.  You can find more great gratitude lesson ideas here: http://www.fastq.com/~jbpratt/lds/resources/gratitude.html and http://lds.families.com/blog/family-home-evening-thanksgiving.  I think that since my kids are small and we are going to a friends' for Thanksgiving, I'll explain some Thanksgiving dinner expectations and talk about how I'd like them to act while we're at someone else's house.

As for games and activities, I found this page on about.com that has some Thanksgiving game ideas: http://www.amazingmoms.com/htm/thanksgiving_games.htm.  I'd like to focus on giving thanks and being grateful, so there was one game in the list that stood out.  Here are the directions:

"Thankerchief"
Arrange the children/players in a circle. Pass around a "thankerchief" (handkerchief) around as everyone recites this poem:

Thankerchief, thankerchief, around you go – 
Where you'll stop, nobody knows.
But when you do, someone must say,
What they are thankful for this day.

The player holding the "thankerchief" when the poem ends, must 
say aloud, one thing for which they are thankful. This continues until 
everyone has had a turn.

On second thought, really little kids like mine may not be able to think of things they're thankful for and say them aloud.  So, maybe a game of Duck, Duck, Goose (or Duck, Duck, Turkey?) would be a better way to get them involved. 

Some other activities I found on theholidayzone.com that I liked were:

• A Thanksgiving Collage: cut out pictures of things you're thankful for from magazines and paste them on a poster
• Chain of Gratitude: write things you're thankful for on small strips of paper and loop them together with staples or tape to make a chain
• Thankful Tree: make a trunk out of brown paper, then write what you're thankful for on "leaves" (construction paper traces of your hand or leaves, or real leaves might work if you use a marker), then paste them on the trunk
• Thanksgiving Certificates: think of people you are thankful for and make award certificates or write thank you notes with things you're grateful for about them (you could send cute Thanksgiving e-cards from this site, but watch out because there are ads all over it)

For medium sized kids who are into jokes, here's a site with some very silly, but completely clean Thanksgiving riddles.  And if your kids are old enough to not eat the crayons, here's a site I like that has good, free Thanksgiving coloring pages to print.  Some of them are called "Bingo dauber pages," and if you wanted to I think you could make a game out of it by letting the kids color in or put a sticker on one empty dauber spot for each thing they say they're thankful for (or something like that). 

If you want an extended activity, watching the movie Pollyanna and then playing "The Glad Game" could be really fun.

For dessert, I think I'll do something like this relatively healthy pumpkin bread, only maybe in cupcake form so it doesn't take so long to cook and to help with portion control.

LDS Hymns (listen to the music, get sheet music, and read the lyrics here: http://www.lds.org/cm/display/0,17631,4650-1,00.html):

• All Creatures of Our God and King – #62 – This selection could not be included on lds.org because of copyright restrictions.
• Because I Have Been Given Much – #219 – This selection could not be included on lds.org because of copyright restrictions.
• Before Thee, Lord, I Bow My Head – #158
• Come, All Ye Saints Who Dwell on Earth – #65
• Come, Let Us Sing an Evening Hymn – #167
• Come, Ye Thankful People – #94
• Count Your Blessings – #241
• Father, This Hour Has Been One of Joy – #154
• Father, Thy Children to Thee Now Raise – #91
• For the Beauty of the Earth – #92
• For the Strength of the Hills – #35
• From Homes of Saints Glad Songs Arise – #297
• God of Our Fathers, We Come unto Thee – #76
• God of Our Fathers, Whose Almighty Hand – #78
• God's Daily Care – #306
• Hear Thou Our Hymn, O Lord – #222
• I Stand All Amazed – #193
• Now Thank We All Our God – #95
• Prayer of Thanksgiving – #93
• Raise Your Voices to the Lord – #61
• Rejoice, the Lord Is King! – #66
• Savior, Redeemer of My Soul – #112
• There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today – #227

LDS Children's Songbook (listen to the music, get sheet music, and read the lyrics here: http://www.lds.org/cm/display/0,17631,4766-1,00.html)

• A Song of Thanks – #20a
• Autumn Day – #247
• Beauty Everywhere – #232
• Can a Little Child like Me? – #9
• Family Prayer – #189
• Father, We Thank Thee for the Night – #8
• For Health and Strength (Round) – #21a
• For Thy Bounteous Blessings (Round) – #21b
• I Am Glad for Many Things – #151
• I Have Two Ears – #269
• I Love to Pray – #25b
• I Thank Thee, Dear Father – #7
• I Think the World Is Glorious – #230
• I'm Thankful to Be Me – #11
• My Heavenly Father Loves Me – #228
• Thank Thee, Father – #24
• Thank Thee for Everything – #10
• Thanks to Our Father – #20b
• Thanks to Thee – #6
• We Bow Our Heads – #25a

• Having a Passover Seder every year
• Easter baskets
• Christmas: cinnamon rolls for breakfast, opening gifts one at a time directed by Dad, reading the Christmas story together, advent calendars, putting baby Jesus in the nativity scene on Christmas morning (Colin's parents do that one), reading A Christmas Carol every year, singing Christmas carols, taking plates of goodies to neighbors
• Reading the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July
• Watching all the sessions of General Conference every time
• Family prayer, twice a day
• Daily family scripture study
• Weekly Family Home Evening
• Family Council
• Family Outings
• On birthdays, the birthday-person gets to choose what to have for dinner and doesn't have to do any chores.  We go around the table at dinner and everyone says something nice about the birthday-person.  Mom and Dad tell the story of when the person was born.
• Interviews–my dad regularly had a one-on-one meeting with each of us kids to talk about what was going on in our lives and what we needed help with and how we were doing spiritually.  I loved interviews.
• Date night–weekly date with spouse
• Daddy-daughter dates-Dad used to take us on one-on-one "dates" occasionally and we got to do fun things with him like go to museums and restaurants
• Going to church every Sunday
• Staying up till midnight (or trying to) on New Year's Eve
• Singing around the piano
• Agendas for everything, including vacations and family reunions
• On Valentine's Day, Dad would buy each of us a carnation
• Getting a Priesthood blessing before starting a new school year or going to a new school
• Trick or treating in costume on Halloween, even though my mom hates Halloween
• Thanksgiving–saying things you're thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner.  Talking about the Pilgrims.  Making tons of pies together from scratch and eating them!
• Dad making us hug each other and say nice things to each other when we fought
• Summer goals–Mom would talk to each of us and help us make a list of goals to accomplish each summer.  She would give us lessons (sewing, cooking, cleaning, etc.) and Dad gave us our "reading assignments." 

My favorite get-you-to-come-to-my-booth-and-talk-to-me tactics were the "spin the wheel and I'll give you a key chain" place, the free candy (a classic), the try-my-massage-chair (I like Relax The Back), and the free kid's security kit.  I think we'll put together the security kits for an FHE sometime.  I also collected a free T-shirt from a guy claiming to be giving away a car and some decorating magazines from furniture store booths.  Colin's favorite tagline of the evening was "Thanksgiving Point: Official Provider of Utah Spring."  For those of you who aren't local, Thanksgiving Point has a tourist attraction where you pay to get in to see their huge garden of tulips.  I've never been there to see the gardens, but it's on my list of places to get to.   

Afterward we went to Carrabas for dessert.  We had their creme brule, which was creamy and crunchy in all the right places, and a lot bigger than I expected.  It came with two little scoops of whipped cream, a sliced strawberry and mint leaves for garnish.  Very good, only I think it would have been better to just split it because it was so big.  We also had their brownie/chocolate cake thingy that I can't remember the name of, which was also very good, with a scoop of ice cream.  The ice cream was vanilla Blue Bell, which I had never had before and which was one of the many reasons my friends from Texas felt sorry for me.  There are so many things we non-Texans miss out on, but now I have finally enjoyed the taste of Blue Bell ice cream and it was lovely.  The cake was just the right amount of intense chocolate flavor and fluffy chocolate mousse filling, and also big enough to share (it came with a sharing size price tag, too).  We couldn't finish either dessert, possibly because of all the free bread with oil and herbs tehy served us while we waited for the server to come back.  We really liked the hostesses we met at the front who were friendly while we waited to be seated (about 10 minutes, probably).