I simply adore this time of year! Thanksgiving through New Years Day is a time filled with fun, family, parties, and presents!
On a not-so-happy note, Jeremiah lost his Grandma Tuck this year. She was an amazing feisty woman who I had the privilege of knowing before Jeremiah and I got married because she lived just down the street from my family. She always loved having family around for the holidays. This year was the first in a long time that some part of Thanksgiving and Christmas wasn't spent with Grandma Tuck. We will miss her dearly.
When she passed away this year Jeremiah's family purchased 40 acres from her estate. The land is near Saint Johns Arizona and it is only a 20 minute drive to get there so we spent some of our Thanksgiving time out there riding 4-wheelers, picnicking, and collecting rocks. About a quarter of the land is sprinkled with bits of petrified wood. We even found some sea shells scattered around.
The kids had a blast pushing around big trucks, crunching leaves, and digging in the soft dirt.
Weeeeeeeeeeee!
Our second trip to The 40 was the day before Thanksgiving. There was still snow left on the ground from a previous storm and it was windy and so cold! (Cold for a desert rat like me.) Once we got out to the land we realized that no one had any fire making supplies. No matches, no lighters, nothing.
So Jeremiah broke out his survivor-man skills and in no time he had built us a fire with nothing but a bit of newspaper and a magnifying glass. To him it was no big deal. To us, he was our hero. Now I have to make sure there is a magnifying glass in our survival kits.
Ahhhh, warmth!
Then he went out to gather rocks to go around our fire pit.
Aunt Veronica knows how to get the boys' attention. She is such a good mom to her boys!
I didn't get any pictures on Thanksgiving day. We spent most of our day with the Hall family, visiting and readying the feast. We ate a huge meal with them and then we dropped by Great Grandma Myrna Udall's house for dessert and a lot more visiting. You know how us Udall's can be. We talked and talked until our kids were tired and cranky then we took them home to bed.
On our way back to the Valley, we ran into some road problems, more snow had started to fall which melted immediately on the wet roads. We were making good time and made it through Show Low while the sun was still shining. Then we ran into this:
It wasn't dark when we first arrived on this scene. The cars stretched on farther than we could see. We inched our way forward as we watched the sun go down and the water on the roads froze to solid ice.
And we waited. . . and waited. . . and waited.
Once our line of cars started moving we celebrated in our car until we went around the corner only to find another longer line of cars stopped and waiting. We almost turned around, only the roads were so icy we were afraid we wouldn't be able to. The safest route was to stay on the road and wait for them to open it up. After about 2 hours of waiting we finally made it past the accident that had us stopped. A highway patrol truck had flipped on it's side on the shoulder of the road just next to a deep ravine.
Our 3.5 hour trip took us 6 hours!!!
Luckily the kids slept through the whole thing.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(Simon made his headband and necklace at preschool.)
