Hannah's 17th birthday and other very important stuff

Our niece, Alicia, and her husband, Dallin, welcomed a new little baby to their house this week! Everett Adam Marr was born on Tuesday, November 27th. He was 7 lbs 1 oz, 20" long, and was born at 2:39 am.

Hannah had promised them $20 if they had their baby on her birthday, so her reply to them on facebook was that they lost out on $20. But, even if Everett doesn't share Hannah's birthday, we are so happy and excited for them. Everett is adorable (I think he looks a bit like his Uncle Adam did) and mother and baby were doing well.

Well, it seems I've used my limit of photo storage space for posting pictures on my blog. I either now have to delete previous pictures or pay to use more storage, So, no photos today, but:

Hannah's 17th birthday was yesterday. Hard to believe, isn't it? We barely saw her as she had slept over at Becky's house...her "twin" who also turned 17 yesterday. Then she took her cousin Madison to Carson City (with me trying not to freak out having Hannah drive in a place she didn't know...having my children drive is a very tough challenge for me). They saw the musical play "The Little Mermaid" and went ice skating--both of which she later reported weren't worth the trip to Carson. Oh,well.

She returned just in time (7:30 pm) to start her spur-off-the-moment party (which was slated to start at 7:30 pm), where friends came over to play games and watch Harry Potter.

At one point during the party there was a lot of screeching going on...at first I thought Hannah was just being exuberant (not hard to picture, is it?), but then it continued so I started to wonder if she was hurt as she came bursting into my room, still screeching. Then I noticed she was holding my cell phone. I then realized what had happened. Hannah was just reacting to a new text message from Andrew that turned out to simply say, "I'm engaged." I didn't have to see the message to know what was going on Andrew had told us earlier in the day that he was going to propose last night (sorry Dad P, you were over, but I was sworn to secrecy, so I couldn't tell you).

So, Happy Birthday Hannah! And congratulations Andrew and Heather!

And, we are down to just having 4 days left with Eric before we take him to Salt Lake. I don't even know what to put after that...yikes...wow...astounding...time is flying.

Eric's 21st birthday, Thanksgiving, and the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich

Eric turned 21 on the 20th...which was the day we traveled down to Vegas to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and her family and my parents. So, we had cake and ice cream on the 19th and celebrated Eric's last day of being 20 (there were only 20 candles on his cake) instead.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Andrew and Heather ran a 10K that Denise's ward has each Thanksgiving--Hannah hadn't brought her sneakers, so she just ran a short leg in her moccasins. Heather won a prize and that was even with her starting 15 minutes late!

We spent 5 days visiting, playing games, eating, seeing a the movie (Lincoln), shopping, and just really enjoying being together.

The main game we played was Andrew's new game, 7 Wonders. I loved it so much, we are going to get one. It is a bit complicated and I normally don't have the patience to learn complicated games, but I really liked it.

I had read a book, The List by Melanie Jacobson (thanks Hanna for lending it to us!), which was super cute and Hannah read it on our trip. In it, the main characters make the "ultimate grilled cheese sandwich." We had to try it. I loved it. It's grilled sour dough bread with cream cheese, cheddar cheese, pepper jack cheese, red onion, and fresh basil. The red onion probably wasn't necessary, since it had the pepper jack cheese, but it was divine.

Now, we are down to just 9 days before Eric reports for his Family History mission... wow.