Thanksgiving? Is that the one before Christmas?

Ryan here.

Christmas came early to the Alleman house. Most of Provo shut down Tuesday, bracing for a blizzard. It hit Salt Lake pretty bad, but we barely got a 1/4 inch of snow. So I had half of Tuesday and all of Wednesday off. The kids voted we put up the Christmas tree early, and Cassie and I didn't put up too much of a fuss.

Here's a video of Eric fetching the branches to our artificial tree for me. He was so jazzed, singing Christmas music to himself the whole time.

And the finished tree, sans star.

Here we are for Thanksgiving dinner. We later visited grandparents in Orem and Springville, but we enjoyed having a quiet little family dinner together. And this way we got leftovers.
"Sweetie, put the camera down and let's eat!"

Beth's practicing her eye-rolls for when she becomes a teenager and knows everything. She's getting a little too good at it. I think Cassie's coaching her.

We asked each kid what they were grateful for. Here's Eric.

He'd just watched Disney's Prep & Landing earlier that day, about elves who prep houses before Santa arrives. If you haven't seen it, it's a cute show.

Here's Beth's contribution.

We hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for, and now we have Christmas to look forward to.

Better Late Than Never

I decided that because we are starting another holiday, I should post the pictures from the last one. So, hopefully, better late than never.

Here is our group before our ward Halloween party. We have Ryan as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Eric as Thomas and driver, (Yeah, I know that last one was a huge surprise for everyone) and our cute little pirate. My mom sent us the most beautiful princess dress for Beth to wear, but she wouldn't hear of it. To quote her, "I'm a pirate, not a princess!"
And she loved being a pirate. Here are a few shots of her "acting" like a pirate. (You might want to note that she had to have a pink-handled sword.)
Sorry this one is a little blurry, but she was showing me her tough face and I had to post it.
Here is our very happy engineer. He was so excited and helpful, what a joy to be around him.
Here are our pumpkins this year. Because the kids weren't allowed to handle the knife, I let them pick the faces from some online photos. These are the ones they chose.
Here we are on Saturday the 30th, ready for trick or treating. It was so cold out! A great big storm blew in with rain and terrible winds. We were out for under an hour and everyone was ready to come home. You can also see that we were able to talk Beth into being a Tiger for this one night. (The costume was a little warmer then the pirate.)
They loved knocking on doors and talking to people. Once Eric impatiently opened the door and walked right in. We apologized profusely to the people inside, who were heading to the door when he barged in. Afterward, we had a long talk with Eric about privacy and appropriateness. "But I knocked!" he kept telling us. It was a really fun Halloween.