Merry Wishes

Ho! Ho! NO!!

Dear Santa,

You scare me.

Please, just hand over the candy.

Thanks.

- Weston

P.S. I really REALLY like your reindeer.

Family & Turkey & a Decathlon?... Oh My!

This Thanksgiving was probably one of the funnest I can remember.  We spent Thanksgiving in Mesa with my family, but we had a great assortments of things to spice it up.

First,  FAMILY...
In addition to my parents, siblings, and Grandma, we had several visitors to share the fun with.
  - My cousin Paige and her family (husband Robert and two kids Reagan and Max), who came down from Las Vegas for a medical residency interview at Mayo Clinic and decided to stay through Thanksgiving
  - My sister's friend from Utah, Misha, who decided to ditch her family and come enjoy a warm thanksgiving in AZ
  - My dad's friend, Dallas, who didn't have any family to spend Thanksgiving with
It was so much fun to have all the extra friends and family, especially since they all made UH-MAZ-ING food!!

Robert and Reagan on the tramp

Reagan was a GREAT source of entertainment for Weston.  They had so much fun chasing each other around the house and yard, and Weston seriously thought he was so cool playing with big 3 yr old Reagan. :)

Next, TURKEY...
I can't do a Thanksgiving post without talking about the meal!!  In one word.  DIVINE.

Taylor and Misha whipping up the most delicious sweet potato pie you've EVER tasted!

Martha Stewart...watch out!!

Oh how I LOVE eating Thanksgiving outside!  I hope we always live somewhere where the weather will allow this.  Best tradition EVER!

Finally, THE DECATHLON...
This year we started a new tradition... "The Annual Jones Family Thanksgiving Decathlon."  We had 10 different events to challenge our brains, balance, athletic ability, and overall awesomeness.  With the addition of Paige, Robert, Misha, and Dallas, there were 10 competitors.

The gamemaster and brains behind the entire operation....

Brett came up with most of the events and the scoring system to make it all fair

THE EVENTS...

1. A Badminton tournament...played over a volleyball net. 

We like to mix things up a bit.  :) 

Weston REALLY thought he was supposed to be in on the action.

2.  Frisbee Golf...a par 3 course.

3.  Ladderball... 

Again, Weston really likes to get in the way.

4.  "Minute to Win It" Cereal Box Puzzle...

I ended up with the quickest time for this event.  Wahoo!

5.  "Minute to Win It" Dice Balancing Game...
5 dice stacked on a popsicle stick held in your mouth

6.  Around the World Ping Pong...

Double elimination

7.  Pool Competition...
Apparently we're all bad!

8.  Basketball...
Kind of a weighted event since my Dad and Garrett are basketball pros!

9.  A Foosball Tournament...

played in randomly drawn pairs

10.  Wii Archery...

Score the most points in 3 rounds

We had such a BLAST competing in our Decathlon and it was a great way to help burn off just enough of our amazing dinner to make room for pie! YUM.

After all the points were tallied, the overall winner... BRETT!!!

Kinda iffy that the guy keeping score wins, right?! Actually, Brett totally rocked it! We had 10 different prizes that everyone got to choose from in order, and Brett got to sign our new "Annual Thanksgiving Decathlon" Trophy!

To sum up our totally awesome Thanksgiving... 

Family and Turkey and a Decathlon...OH MY!

Since I haven't posted about Weston in a while...

...here's what he's been up to lately...

...helping me with laundry...

...taking his BFF on car rides...

...and working on his gardening skills.

All I can say, is it's a good thing I love this mischievous little boy!

Dead

Yesterday our trusty desktop died.  It croaked.  It gave up the ghost...and possibly/probably all our video of Weston's life thus far. :(  We have an external hard drive that has all our music and pictures (whew!!), but we realized all too late that none of our video and most of our documents were never backed up.  We have one last ditch effort up our sleeves to retrieve the lost data from our dead drive.  If not, they will be gone forever.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.  And also...go back up your computer.

UPDATE:  Using a USB hard drive adapter that we borrowed from a computer tech in our Ward, Brett was able to recover ALL the data from our dead hard drive!  HOORAY!!!  We were able to transfer all our desired files to our laptop, and our new replacement computer just arrived today.  Yay!