Being in the military, you always worry about being moved away from your family and friends, but as McKay and I are figuring out, Los Angeles is turing out to be a place that friends and family come to us! We spent our Thanksgiving up at our cousin's home and were thrilled to find out that other cousins from Utah would be joining us! Here is the lady that made the day all possible! Our incredible Aunt Leticia!
Aunt Leticia has a wonderful garden and many fruit trees surrounding their home that yield them incredible fruit juices like the one below. This one is a orange and pomegranate juice! As you can see by the sign below, McKay's family is pretty serious about their food rights...
The girls worked in the kitchen, while the boys watched football,
...but don't worry, as tradition goes, boys do the dishes and clean up. And this little boy was the cutest of them all! Nothing so attractive as a man doing dishes!
Incredible Aunt Leticia made all of these 9 pies from scratch.
After dinner, I introduced the kids to the What If Game. It was a big hit! We played it until late into the night and then again the next night. It's one of those games that makes you laugh and laugh until you start crying. I love it!
If you haven't played it before, you must! It's better to play with a bigger group and is great for kids, or adults, or both. Everyone gets a small blank piece of paper and writes a what if question. It can be anything. Something like, "What if the sky was green?" or "What if Michael Jackson was your father?" Anything! Then you pass the question to the person next to you and have them answer it. After that, everyone puts their paper in a basket and then picks a paper from the basket that they didn't write either the question or answer on. Then the laughter begins! One person reads their question, but then, the person to the right or left of them, (depending on which way you want to go around the circle,) reads their answer. This continues down the row with one person reading their question and their neighbor reading their answer.
There were many, many funny questions and answers from the nights, but this was the cutest answer by far. Aaron (8) wrote this one.
The rest of the break was filled with games for the guys,
and shopping for the girls!
I'm not a big Black Friday shopper, but did have a blast shopping with these fun ladies and finding a few incredible deals along the way!
A successful day of shopping!
My favorite part of the whole break, by far, was story time with McKay. The kids (and as you can see, the not-so-much-kids) begged for McKay to read to them every night. 
Besides McKay being a fabulous storyteller, he is also a very good improviser, which often led to conclusions with very hungry caterpillars dying from heart-attacks or Fancy Nancys not being so fancy.
Our future kids have no idea how lucky they will be to have this man as their daddy. I will always be grateful to have him as my husband and best friend. He makes me laugh every day and always makes me feel beautiful and loved. What a blessed girl I am! Besides McKay, this Thanksgiving I am thankful for our family and friends, for our health, for our church, for temples, for the many little blessings and miracles we often overlook each day, for the Lord's goodness, and for this next month of December that we have the privilege of remembering our Savior and his most humble beginning.
