Thanksgiving

We went to St. George this year for Thanksgiving. There was no improvement in the weather despite traveling south. It was cold and rainy the first couple of days. It was fun to be with family. We met my nephew and niece from Atlanta for the first time. The kids enjoyed getting to know their cousins a little better and it was good to see Rich and Sandra again. We had dinner with Shawn's extended family at his aunt Marci's house. Thanksgiving day involved playing the wii, launching rockets that we had made, and haircuts for the boys at the barbershop. (Shawn's cousin is married to a barber.) Jonas was not happy about getting his haircut, but he was beginning to look a bit like a full-maned lion and what with a wedding coming up and all.... well, we just hope he'll forgive us before too long. The rockets were definitely a highlight for the older kids in spite of the rain. It was amazing to see how high they went. Samantha's managed to last through 2 or 3 launches which was quite a feat since they were made of paper and it was wet. Although, I did remember to take my camera to St. George, I don't have a single picture from the weekend! Here's some video of the rocket launches.



We did manage to squeeze in one last adventure on our way home. While we were driving on the freeway, the hood latch on the suburban broke. It was very windy and we were obviously traveling at highway speeds, so the hood flew up, bent back and smashed into the windshield. Despite being unable to see anything, Shawn was able to slow down and pull over to the side of the road. It was pretty frightening and we felt extremely blessed that it all ended so well. Samantha cried and yelled "we're doomed, we're doomed!" over and over again until we convinced her that we couldn't call the tow truck and get help unless she stopped. Fortunately, Shawn's mom and Doug were just 10 miles ahead of us in Beaver. We stopped there and were able to secure the hood down so we could drive the car home. It doesn't look pretty, but it could have been so much worse. We figure we will at least need a new hood, a new windshield, new wipers, etc. , etc... One of the first things we did after pulling over was to give a prayer of thanks for our safety. And despite the delay, we still managed to make it to Thanksgiving dinner at the Stewarts - almost on time.



The damage:

A little like this...