8 Days 'Til Christmas!

I love this time of year. The smell of goodies and a Christmas tree, there's not much that beats that. And now that we finally have snow it actually feels like Christmas is almost here. Landon got all our Christmas stuff put up the very first of December so it's been fun having all the decorations up. Both Landon and I have childhood stockings that we put up. Our grandma's made them for us. Having them up makes us feel like kids again.

Growing up my mom would put up so many decorations it looked like Santa threw up Christmas in our house. lol I loved it though! Those are the kinds of memories I will remember forever. Instead of putting all our Christmas presents from Santa underneath the Christmas tree my mom, Santa ;-) , would put each kids presents on a different couch. Then the presents from her would be under our Christmas tree in a different room. We loved it. We'd know which couch was ours either by the things in the stocking or she would leave one thing unwrapped seating on each couch. There was one Christmas when we were little and my mom was trying to support us on her own, she didn't have enough money to wrap all our presents so she put our gifts on our own couch unwrapped. No matter how hard she had to work she always made it so we had a great Christmas. :-) These are the kinds of traditions I want to have with my kids. One traditions Landon I started was that we watch Elf every Christmas Eve. It's one of our favorite Xmas shows. This year we made a ginger bread house. Half way through building it Landon fell asleep with the frosting all over his fingers. Ha ha! But, with his effort he did put into before that, it turned out great.

Christmas day is usually a very busy day for us. Trying to see all our parents on Xmas turns out like the move Four Christmas's. LOL We spend the whole day driving and feel like all we do is run in get our presents and run out to the next place. So, this year we are going to start a tradition. We are going to see my dad on Xmas Eve, our mom's on Xmas day, and his dad the day after xmas. We would like to see them all on Xmas day of course, but spending more than half an hour with each of them is more important to us. I think that setting this tradition now will make it easier for us when we have kids.

Only 8 days until Xmas!!! Yay! We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas. If we don't get to see you know that we are thinking of you and love you all very much.

Dedicated to Shellie Nelson-Ernest

This year has been a tough year for my mom's side of the family. We all watched one of our loved one's life get cut short by a dreadful disease. My second cousin Shellie, fought Breast Cancer for five years until it finally got the best of her. She was sent to her Heavenly Father on November 2, 2008. She was only 38 years old and left behind her husband Danny, two sons Jake and Tyler, and daughter Emilee.

Shellie was one of the strongest people I have ever met. She battled an awful disease for so many years and the whole time all she was worried about was everyone else. Even up to her last words, she was trying to keep us all smiling by cracking jokes. She was an easy person to be around and love. I have never seen so many people at one funeral service. She had a line out the door the entire night. Shellie, we will miss you everyday. We love you very much and will do our best to take care of your family. Save us a place in Heaven.

Breast Cancer is a powerful disease that takes the lives of many of our loved ones each day. One in eight woman get breast cancer. You should be asking yourself, "Am I aware of my chances of getting breast cancer?" Get your yearly mammograms and make sure you are being proactive checking yourself regularly. Early detection can save a life.

We are still alive!

I realize I have neglected our blog for much too long. I'm sure that some of you are going through Thompson Blog withdrawls. No need to worry my friends! We are back! It has been an insanely busy month in the Thompson home. Landon had been working his little hiney off getting his new guys in his store settled and I'm trying to learn as much as I can about the biz. We have both been working a lot of overtime and will only be working more over the Holidays. Unfortunatley, this is the life of people in retail. Besides all the extra hours put in, I'm really enjoying my job. It's so nice to not be working in Escrow right now. That's not only because of the lack of work in that position, but also because I was just ready for something different. I think Landon and I both were ready for me to do something else. Working all these crazy hours we see less of our family, but we see more of each other. Honestly, we see each other more now than we have our whole time knowing each other. Okay, maybe we did see each other more when we were dating because we gave up all sleep just to be with each other. And lets face it, when you get married you just don't stay up as late. But seriously, we are doing really good. We are excited for this time of year. I thought I was going to be making Thanksgiving this year, but my Grandma Forbush ended up coming to my rescue and inviting us to join them. :-) This is our year with my dad. We only do one set of parents on Thanksgiving so we only spend it with them every four years. It sucks we have to do that, but it works out best for us to not have to run around all day and really get to enjoy their company for the whole day. We're not quite sure how we are going to do Christmas this year. It has changed each year. Neither of us like to give up seeing any of our parents, but it becomes an insanely crazy day when we try to see all four sets of parents in one day. No matter how it works out we want all of them to know we love them all and if we had the power we would spend hours with each of them on every holiday. :-) Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow I feel it necessary to say what I am thankful for.

I am thankful for:

-My husband who works so hard

-My family

-My dogs, even though they are pests sometimes. They fill that space in our family. :-)

-Our house. Many people are losing their homes and we have been blessed to have a home we can afford and keep as ours.(and the banks) ;-)

-Life-I lost someone special in my life this year who had lived a short life. All the way until the end she fought and had a smile on her face. We must live each day as if it's our last. Don't sweat the small stuff. Use all the energy you use for anger and saddness for happiness and laughing.

-Last, but not least my Heavenly Father. I know I can always count on him to be by my side through all my trails.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! We love you all!

Famous Forbush's

I know I have already done a post from the pumking carving contest at my grams and gramps, but I had to share this extra tid bit with you. We were for the 3rd time, in the newspaper! Check this out! That's right peeps, the Forbush Family are a bunch of seriously talented pumpking carvers! :-)

Back to School

For the last three weeks of October I spent my days in a classroom. I had to wake up at 5:30am and drive to West Valley everyday. This is all very similar to being back in school. For those of who don't know, I was hired by Verizon for the Customer Service position in the Riverdale store. Each new hire has to go through three weeks of training. When I first heard I was going to have to go to training I was told I might have to go to Denver for the three weeks. We ended up having enough people here in Salt Lake to have the training in our West Valley Training Center. Besides the waking up early, training wasn't bad at all. Actually, it was a lot of fun. Usually there are about fifteen people in each class, but ours only had six. We really enjoyed our small group. We got to know each other really well over the three weeks. I became really good friends with one of the girls in my class. Her name is Ashley too. :-) She works in our Jordan Landing location, so unfortunatley we aren't very close to each other, but we still keep in touch. On top of having fun training friends we had an awesome trainer. She made the long three weeks not seem so long. She made things fun for us and I feel like I learned a lot from her. Last Friday was our last day. It was bitter sweet leaving. We all had a good time together, but we were excited to be back in our stores to start our new journeys. Yesterday was my first day back in the store. I won't lie, I was a little intimidated, but I know each day will get easier and easier. Verizon is a great company to work for. I'm excited to see where this new career takes me.

Happy Halloween!

We usually have a Halloween party to go to on Halloween, but this year our friends decided not to throw their party. So, Brittney and I decided that we would plan something fun. We planned what food we wanted to have and them give each of them fun HallOwEEn names. (see pictures below) The boys made homemade rootbeer that was very delicious. We decorated with candles and carved pumkins and of course we dressed up! Brittney wrote a cute little poem to pull it all together. It was just me, Landon, Britt, Tom, and Debbie. Heather, Steve and Jack stopped by four a little while. Jack was a stinkin' cute Curious George. After stuffing our faces with all the witches tOe nAiLs and ZoMbie vOmiT we watched scary movies. We had a very fun Halloween! We may just have to do it all again next year. :-)

Pumpkin Carving

Every year my Grandma and Grandpa Forbush have a pumpkin carving contest with my dad's side of the family. They have been doing it since I was one. My Grandma Forbush has started a lot of fun traditions for our family. This one, imparticular, has been a favorite of all of us. When we first get there we all pick out our pumpkins that Grandma and Grandpa have provided for us. Then we grab our carving utensils and get started! We usually spend about two hours perfecting our pumpkin master pieces then we head inside for some of Grandma's bEEf stEw. She's so cute because she will always have fun finger foods that are perfect for Halloween. She'll make piGs-in-A-blanKet that look like fingers, cottage cheese with drips of red dye, or gummy worm jello. After we all get done eating we head back upstairs to do the prizes! Grandma brings out her big bin full of prizes and has each of us show her our pumpkin so she can give us the appropriate prize. She'll give you a prize that matches what she thinks your pumpkin is expressing. Like she'll say, "You're pumpkin is the nuttiest" and give us a nutrageous. We're not done yet! My Grandma and Grandpa lived in the same house since before I was born. They had a flat roof that was a perfect width across to fit all of our pumpkins across. Grandpa would put all our pumpkins up there with a light inside each of them and we'd all watch each of our pumpkins cOmE tO lifE. They would leave them out for the whole week before Halloween. It's made us a very popular family. We have been in the newspaper three times! Well, unfortunatley my grandparents moved about three years ago into a house that has a slanted roof. It's too slanted to put any pumpkins on it. Instead of putting them on the roof they have shelves that they put in front of there house to set all of our pumpkins on. They still light up each of them. It's not quite the same, but we'll take what we can get. :-) Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Forbush for making such a fun Halloween tradition for us!

Landon's pumpkin:front Mine:Back

Carving fun with Dad