We had such a wonderful time at Thanksgiving with Kara, Alvin, and Nigel. Nigel was adorable. At first Abby and Oliver were a little shy around him, but they quickly warmed up and were sharing all of their toys with him. As soon as they realized that the first thing Nigel did was put toys in his mouth, they made sure to share their toys for a very brief moment!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, mostly prepared by Kay, with spiral sliced honey ham, turkey breast with homemade cranberry sauce, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, sweet potato swirls, potatoes and gravy, rainbow jello, lettuce salad, and whole wheat rolls. Best of all, Kay made both apple pie and pumpkin pie! She is such an amazing cook, and a great hostess. Perhaps the biggest challenge of the day was getting Abby to come sit up at the table for dinner. We had brought our old high chair up for Nigel to use, but Abby decided that she had to sit in it herself. We tried to reason with her, but we finally decided to was better to let her eat Thanksgiving dinner in the high chair than to have the meal end up with everyone in tears.

After dinner we played “Toy Story” bingo and then I gave a short Thanksgiving lesson. I made pirate hats for all of the kids and we went on a treasure hunt looking for our blessings. Oliver loved following the treasure map that I made and he said that it was the best part of the day.

Kara and Alvin had to leave on Friday, so we only saw them for a couple of days, but it was great to have them here. We hope they come back soon!

We are so grateful for our family! Kara, Alvin, and Nigel came from New York to visit us today. We love having them here.

Baby Nigel is adorable!

Thank you Grandma Kotter for sending the fun Thanksgiving present. Oliver and Abby love the new Christmas shirts that you gave them.

On a recent Sunday afternoon we decided to take a walk around our neighborhood. It was a beautiful fall day and we enjoyed the changing leaves on the trees.

We found a house that had carved a couple of old stumps into “thrones”. Oliver and Abby had to try climbing and sitting on them.

I feel very blessed to have such a wonderful family.

At the first of September, we took a quick trip to Utah to visit Grandpa and Grandma James. It was great to get a little break before I started school again. We had a great trip! I went backpacking in the Uintas with Dave, Kevin, and Karen. We had a great time, including cliff-diving into a very cold lake. (Well, at least Dave and I went cliff diving. I couldn’t be outdone by my father-in-law, after all!) During the rest of the week, we had fun visiting with family, celebrating birthdays, playing in Scera Pool, and walking around beautiful BYU campus. As always, our trip was too short and we can’t wait to go back. Thanks to Grandpa and Grandma James for helping to pay our way and make this trip possible.

Oliver had an awesome idea to climb one of our trees. When he made it up, he asked me to take his picture.

The best part, though, is the ingenuity it took to get up in the tree. He came up with this system all on his own. I had to snap another photo to capture the “behind-the-scenes” ladder.

He is a pretty clever kid.

This is old news for most of you that read this blog, but I thought I would write this down for posterity’s sake. Around the end of June I was in a crazy bike accident. I was biking home from school at a little after 5 o’clock when a lady in a parked car opened her driver side door right in front of me. I had no time to react — I couldn’t swerve, or hit my breaks, or even blink. I instantly slammed into the inside of the door. I was going pretty fast (not quite full-steam, but almost) and the force of the impact bent the front fork of my bike and bent the door of the car back until it almost touched the hood of the car. As my bike hit the door, I flipped backward through the window of the door. The glass shattered as I crashed through it and I landed on my head on the other side. Miraculously, I was relatively unscathed. I was bleeding quite a bit, though, since a lot of the glass pieces from the window were shoved into my forearm as I skidded on the road.

The accident happened on Liberty street right in front of LAB coffee shop. A couple of workers from the coffee shop came out to see if I was okay. They brought me some ice water and a dish rag to help me stop the bleeding. Someone else brought out a first aid kit and got me the tweezers so I could pick the biggest chunks of glass out of my arm. While we waited for the police to show up, I had a few bystanders come and tell me that they couldn’t believe what they had seen. “That was awesome,” they said, “it looked like something right out of a movie!” It may look cool in movies, but it sure doesn’t feel very good!

When the police arrived, they ticketed the lady in the car for failure to yield to oncoming traffic. I felt bad for her; she was probably in her mid-seventies, and she kept saying, “I just didn’t look. I didn’t even see you there.” She looked even more shook up than I was. The police officer offered to call me an ambulance, but that seemed ridiculous so I declined. A nice girl who had seen everything happen and stayed around to be a witness offered to let me use her iphone to call Kay; she even told me not to worry about getting blood on it. Kay came and picked me up and then I went to an urgent care center to get checked over. They patched me up, gave me a tetanus shot, and sent me on my way.

I included these photos to show off my arm bandages. I healed up nicely, and now all I have left is a few faint scars on my arm. The lady’s insurance even paid for my bike – which I had actually inherited free from our landlord when we moved here – so in the end things worked out well. I feel very blessed; I was definitely watched over on that day. And now I have quite the story to emphasize to Oliver and Abby why we need to wear helmets!

One of our favorite nicknames for Abigail is Nibby Nabby. She is adorable!

The other night as I tucked her into bed, we had the following conversation:

Me: I love my Nibby Nabby.
Abby: I love my Nibby Dad.