Happy Thanksgiving!
We hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving! We sure did! The day started off with Angela and Brittany running the 2009 Naperville Turkey Trot 5K. They had a great time and although it was a little chilly, it could have been much colder!
We all then cleaned up the house, started cooking the turkey, got some relish trays together and waited for our guests to come celebrate with us. We had 2 families come over so there were about 16 people here. It was great to sit around and visit, play games, and have some WONDERFUL FOOD! We ended up having 2 turkeys, 1 of which was cajun injected and deep fried which was fabulous! We also had stuffing, potatoes, rolls, all kinds of appetizers, 7-layer Jell-o, and much more!
For dessert, we ended up having about 7 or 8 pies for the 16 of us! We had double-layer pumpkin, apple, blueberry, regular pumpkin, french silk, pumpkin roll, and a couple of others! Talk about full!
For an activity, we drew a featherless turkey and had everyone write what they were thankful for on paper feathers and tape them on the turkey. Kirstyn was in charge of that and she had a great time collecting the feathers. It was fun to read what everyone was thankful for!
At this time of year, we are very thankful for all the blessings we have. We consider ourselves very lucky (and blessed) to be in the situation we are when there are so many out there who are out of work or otherwise struggling. We are working hard as a family to always remember to be greatful for all our blessings!
Today, the Comcast cable installer came and hooked us up with new internet access (cable with up to 20 Mb download), new internet phone, and a huge cable package of over 300 channels (HD included), and an HD DVR! We are very excited! We were on Dish Network, AT&T DSL, and standard phone service and were paying about $30 more per month. The only thing we’re missing is the BYU channel! The phone is working wonderfully well, despite my concerns of being internet-based. We’ll see how this goes!
Tonight Sarah and Brittany had their Young Women in Excellence program. What a wonderful program! The cultural hall at the church was decorated to the hilt and on the walls, each girl had a side-view of their silhouette. We all had to go around and match these to their names. It was very interesting and fun! 🙂 They hold this every year and the young women in our ward look forward it. They seem to always outdo themselves from one year to the next.
We had a great second day of SIMposium in Seattle! It was full of great keynote presentations, breakout sessions, and good food! I learned a lot of great things not only about Information Technology but about leadership in general. There were a lot of CIOs from around the country that we were able to talk to and participate in sessions with.
When we arrived, they had a cocktail hour to loosen every one up. 🙂 Then they had a great buffet of food to eat. After eating (and more drinking for some), we went into the museum and looked around for the rest of the time. We saw all kinds of things from Michael Jackson’s jacket and silver glove, to Jimmi Hendrix’s guitars and memorabilia, to Eddie Van Halen’s red and white striped guitar, and much more. In the atrium, they had a “guitar tree that spanned all the way up to the roof (shown to the right).
After listening to them, there were a bunch of the group who got together and decided to go into the mock concert stage (sound room) and make a recording together. In honor of the bead necklace concept and nuts (long story, I won’t elaborate here), the group named itself “Rusty Nutt” and performed. Here is a link to the video: 
