Yay for Christmas time!!

On Monday I had a fun surprise for Stan when he got home for work. I decided the week earlier that I wanted to get our Christmas stuff up ASAP so it could feel more like Christmas time. I went out and bought a tree, a few decorations, and pulled out the random ones I have gathered over the years. Here is a picture of just the tree but we have some other decorations like a red table cloth, lights and garland around our window, a snowman plaque, Santa kneeling by the Savior in a manger, and a delicious smelling apple cider candle :). Christmas is my favorite!!!

And today was so nice! It made it snow!! It snowed hard all morning, so much that they cancelled Stan's work and he got to come home early. We celebrated with a game of qwirkle and hot chocolate. (Let's be honest here though: our snow storm was nothing compared to what somewhere north of here gets, Albuquerque is just kinda a wimp when it comes to snow)

And a pic from last weekend! We got to see one of our favorite people, Sara! She was in Arizona visiting her brother and fam and was kind enough to meet up with us for dinner. We sure like her!! (And any excuse we can get to go to the Cheesecake Factory...yum!)

Thanksgiving 2013

A few weeks ago Mel made a delicious blackberry pie. Not bad for her first try!

Stan also made a lamb curry that turned out great.

Stan took Wednesday off and we drove down to Mesa for Thanksgiving. He has been working on a programming project and found a way to continue working on it while driving.

He put a pillow on his lap, then the cooler, then the laptop. He also had a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Mel drove. There was some snow on the way.

We made a delicious chocolate pie for Thanksgiving, as well as stuffing and yams and apples. About 18 people came, which is small for the Merrill family. Turkey and everything else was great.

We drove about an hour south to the Casa Grande ruins. It was neat. The largest building was supposedly four stories tall and built in the 1400s.

The walls of the ruins were made of adobe.

If you look close you can see Ben, Mel's brother on the other side.

These holes were for wooden floor beams.