November in a NUTshell

November wraps up all the Fall sports (can I get a hallelujah??!!) Soccer and Fall Ball came to a close, we went on a wonderful little camping trip with Grant and Ray & Hezzie, we had a lovely Holdsworth-Williams Sonoma sit-down, we travelled to Mesa then Yuma for Thanksgiving and packed a whole bunch of fun into a wonderful family weekend.
(I stumbled upon some blog boards that come with a resize-input action...not sure if they will work for the book conversions....but they helped me get through this ginormous post --I just realized that they're slightly oversized...oh well - I'll fix 'em next time...mom you can scroll over to see the entire image :)

McLaren played his first season of soccer.  He loved it and grew in aggressiveness little by little (can you imagine smacky being intimidated?)  
Ella is such a help in the office...Desperate working moms will go through anything to get work done...
I love having my own private Thanksgiving dinner :)

We decided the kids needed some ethnic culture...we introduced them to sushi..
I took Indy to see The Giver and Smackdoodle was the best little farmer in the 1st grade Thanksgiving play.  (I'm so glad that I prevented him from going to school his 1st outfit choice that resembled a Chinese laborer).  We hit a killer new dine-in theater in Scottsdale and took the kids to see Life of Pi - a beautiful masterpiece.

 We had a grateful board - I think we need to work on our spelling. McLaren took quite a few tries to say he was thankful for Ella...and our School Spelling Bee champ struggled on "school".

Court and Rachel talked Jace (who is totally AVAILABLE - all he needs is a woman who is willing to live on a cattle ranch with him...takers??) anyway they talked Jace into gathering skulls so they can take them and sell them in LA - apparently Californians are wild for this stuff :)


Thanksgiving allowed for all of my siblings to be together for a few hours.  
(Tim struggles with knowing where to look- but we couldn't just tell him he wasn't invited in the picture).  
We were able to celebrate with my grandfather David B. Noble - it was good to see him.  My kids held still for a few photos...ok just one.

If we had known what Wade was going to do with the microphone I'm pretty sure that someone would've sabotaged it...

 After Mesa we travelled down to Yuma to hang with cousins.  We had a good bbq at the Nelson compound and everyone brought a pinterest dish that they had never made.  Ashlee chose to make her cake with old left-over oil that made us all gag - but hey the texture was great!!

We talked Tommy Gwynn into taking us on some Yuma single track.  It was the Thunderdome/Moon ride.  Awesome ride...and I didn't fall too far behind (of course they had to wait for me...a LOT.)  

Camping with the Holdsworth's is always a wonderful event.  Grant had his shotgun redone (and it had lots of "fiddleback" in the wood...see? I totally paid attention!)  the kids rode quads, McLaren hacked on a log for 3 hrs straight then ate the donuts uncle Mikey Mike brought (and he seriously resembled a Limpnickie-a big ol' plane dropped the donuts out of the sky).  And thank heavens for Uncle Ray Fire-Dance (raised on Sai-Pan) because he taught us all how to cut a mango and eat it properly!

We are so thankful for our family our friends and our faith.  We are grateful for a roof over our heads and the opportunity to get an education.  We are looking forward to the month of December where we get to enjoy more family and friends and find ways to serve serve serve.
Happy Holidays are Here!