Festival of Tree's

This was a fun day out! Dan finished work early and we headed out to the South Towne Expo Center to look at all the tree's decorated and donated to Primary Children's. I remember in Elementary school going to this event and performing with the school choir. It was one of the highlights of the year for me! It's been so long since I've been, I wondered how much it had changed, but it hasn't. If anything, it's bigger and better! The kids flipped out as soon as we walked in and it was hard to keep them all from running in 4 different directions. Hailey loved all the blue trees and the High School Musical Tree!

Abby wanted a picture by every tree! She found a few she liked as well. She loved the ones with animals on them, horses and dogs and all the tree's with candy on them as well!

Rachel loved the Princess Tree! Go figure!

Joe loved the sports tree's! He went crazy over this cute firetruck tree but I didn't take a picture...dang it!

The we saw the gingerbread houses!!! Holy Cow! These were so cool and gave me some great ideas for next year! I had to take a bazillion pictures, but I'll only post a few and spare you.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving this year was held at my parents house. It was so nice to be with my fam. We also had Dan's brother Darren and his wife Traci and they're kids Emmie and Allyson with us for the week as they are planning to move here in December. They found a home and had they're offer accepted Thanksgiving morning, so they were on cloud 9. I'm so excited to have them here! It was such a nice, relaxing day. We ate and ate and ate. I seriously haven't eaten that much food for a long time and I'm sure I gained a good 10 lbs. My dad makes the best potatoes and gravy and my moms stuffing this year....rocked! My mom got this new karoke machine and the kids sang songs for us, it was so cute! That evening we went over to Dan's aunt Linda's and visited for a while. Joe kept asking if he could ride horses (his favorite thing to do when we go see Linda), but I had to keep telling him it was dark and too cold. We came home and stayed up with Darren and Traci and played games for awhile until Hailey woke up throwing up everywhere! I knew at least one of the kids would. I didn't hold back from letting him eat whatever they wanted, so I was sure one of them would yack it up. Poor Hailey felt so bad for getting it everywhere. Poor Dan was down there scrubbing for at least an hour or more (Dan does puke and I do poop). And Traci was cool enough to help us, I mean who helps someone clean up puke when it isn't they're kids puke. Thanks again Traci for helping us! Other than that it was a great day!

Strep!

So I posted a couple of days ago about Joe's swollen lymph nodes and no other signs of sickness. The doc took a quick strep and it was negative. Well, they sent the test to the lab and found that it was strep! Crazy! My only concern is he's had these swollen lymph nodes for a couple of weeks ago and he's been everywhere...isn't he contagious? The other concern is what if I had not found his swollen lymph nodes, then what? This is strange.

Thanksgiving Day Human Race

Early this morning my Mom, Dad, brother Brent and I ran in the Utah Human Race 5K walk/run. It was so much fun! We're crazy to be waking up early, but we did and worked off a few calories to justify our Thanksgiving Day food frenzy! Mom walked and did it in great time! Dad surprised us all by running it instead of walking it and ran it in great time, right behind me and I've been running for forever! Dad just got the bug, maybe it was from his marathon past. For those of you who were going to run it and didn't, you missed out! There were tons of people young and old and lots of kids. I'm for sure doing that again next year! And to my friend Chels, I was thinking of you and our fun Turkey Trot at the zoo last year, I missed ya!

The flu!

I hate the flu! Joe has had these swollen lymph nodes for a couple of weeks now and we took him to the doctor and the doc didn't seem all that concerned. Let me just say, I love alternative medicine. Sometimes doctors seriously don't know what they are talking about! I take probiotics, which are basically good bacteria and in concentrated form. Yogurt has good bacteria but you have to eat a lot to get what you need. Anyway, I gave him some probiotics, echinacea, vitamin C and I'm doing some research on some homeopathics. Just today, there is a noticable difference. They are going down! Swollen lymph nodes is basically just a sign of some infection in his body. Anyway, I was relieved to see a difference. Well, on top of Joe's weird lymph node thing, Abby started in with throwing up and the "other" and I came down with it last night! It was horrible! Again, the healthy stuff is helping us get over it quickly and Abby is doing well and I'm totally feeling great today. Anyway, I'm just waiting for everyone else to come down with it and I'm hoping it ends before Thanksgiving, because what's the point in eating when your feeling like crap. I'm also doing a 5K walk/run Thanksgiving morning with my sister-in-law Steph and brother Brent and my parents. I'm hoping I'm feeling up to it, considering I haven't exercised at all for a few days and I never miss a day.



Another big stress is yet again my lesson this Sunday for my Mia Maids. It's on "Participating in the Cultural Arts". When I think of cultural arts, I immediatly think of music, because that's what I know. I'm not studied on literature or art and need some help! I was thinking of reading a famous poem of some kind to the girls and/or showing a famous piece of art and talking about it with them. Any ideas?

Microwave Popcorn!

This is a cool site! I just found a way to make your own Microwave Popcorn any way you like it. Check it out:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Microwave-Popcorn%3a-Home-made%2c-cheap-and-easy/

Traditional Candy Houses!

Brent's space ships

Cortnie's Christmas Villiage
Dad's Retirement Community
Shawn's Bee House

This is a super fun tradition the Ballard family started years ago. Living in Portland these last two years, we didn't get a chance to participate with everyone in this fun tradition. So, I was super excited to do it this year. We made these houses at my parents house. Brent and Cortnie came along with Steph and the kids (Samm, Parker, Aubrey, & Haven). Shawn came a little later and we were excited to see him too! We had such fun! All of us adults helped one of the kids and then they played while we made our creations. Some of us think about this way in advance, while other just start creating! It's so much fun to see what everyone comes up with. It's also fun to see the in-laws creating each year. Dan's now been doing this for 10 years and his houses are really getting neat! The kids were so much fun to watch! They ate candy like it was going out of style and this is one of those times when I just let them eat as much as they wanted!