Thanksgiving Break

This year at BYU I have two other brothers for a change.  Since getting home from my mission I have been all alone in my studies here and it is nice to have some of my loved ones around.  Keaton, Brandon and I loaded up on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and made our annual trip down to see our grandparents in Arizona.  It is about a ten hour drive if you do it right.  It was kind of funny to me because on the way down we do a lot of up and downs on the highways due to the mountainous terrain.  Our little Mazda is a stick shift and on one such stretch of ups and downs Keaton was driving and having a lot of trouble down shifting into fourth gear.  The poor guy.  We ended up going super slow up some of those hills and other cars were getting mad at us because of our delay.  Ha!  A fun experience to remember!

On the way down we listened to Ender’s Shadow, by Orson Scott Card.  If you haven’t read any of his books, REPENT!  So far all of the books I have read that he has authored have been phenomenal!  Course I love the sci-fi futuristic kind of plots so keep that in mind if you want to read them.  

We stayed at Grandma Willis’ house while we were there.  Wednesday morning all three of us got up and went to the Mesa temple and met Grandpa Joe and Grandma Karen (my father’s parents).  Brandon and I did a session there and Keaton did homework.  Then after wards we followed them over to great aunt Sheila’s place and ate lunch with them and other extended family. 

We locked our keys in the car and grandma is trying to get her arm in and unlock the car for us!

While at Grandma Willis’ we helped he to hang up a lot of her Christmas stuff.  She loves to decorate and has loads of Christmas decorations!  But we love helping her out and especially because there were three of us it went much faster.  We found an old slide projector and old family slides and pulled them all out and projected them onto the wall.  It was really fun to have our grandma explain some family history to us.  She has been through a lot with her family and it was good to see those slides and talk with her about the many experiences that she has had in her life.  We also found a lot of grandma’s old records and played many of her favorite ones on her record player.  That was really cool too. 

Keaton running the slide projector

Grandma loves to play dominoes and we played several games with her and really enjoyed her company and her stories.  One night while there, we went to the temple again to see all of the beautiful Christmas lights and admire the beauty of the temple.  On our way home Keaton was driving and while leaving the temple parking lot turned left and cut off a cop!  The cop turned on his lights and pulled us over.  Came up to the window and said “You know why I pulled you over?” Keaton had a conversation with him and then all the sudden our car was light up by a police helicopter in the area.  The cop said “Shoot! Now we got the Ghetto Bird on us.”  He radioed to them that the situation was all fine and let Keaton off with a warning.  We all got such a big kick out of the whole thing!  The “Ghetto Bird!” Crazy! 

Mesa Temple 

We also had a hilarious time with our mentally handicapped aunt Cheryl.  She is usually pretty happy but for some reason we all had a really fun time making her laugh and say funny things.  Grandma made us fantastic food while we were there and we watched lots of movies with her.  She really likes to watch Hallmarks. 

Aunt Cheryl

Being silly for Cheryl

Aunt Julia and Grandma Karen helped me with a history project while there.  I made clay pipes from scratch to try and match those found in ancient Rome and other second century pipe uses.  Keaton, Brandon and I all went to hike Thunderbird mountain, a family tradition that goes back decade now.  It seems like the mountain has shrunk a little because it didn’t take as long as I remember to hike to the top!  We all ended up jogging up any way.  On our way to the hike we passed so many wonderful and beautiful Arizona mansion homes.  They have such a unique design and style and I love it so much!

I tried to activate my new Samsung Galaxy SIII while down there but had some complications with the dumb phone company receptionists that couldn’t speak English!  I wouldn’t have minded if they had spoken to me in Spanish but they didn’t know that either!  I spent over an hour trying to get this woman to figure out that I wanted to activate my phone with my previous phone number!  It was unbelievable!  It is okay, I have it all figures out now and I love my phone!

Clay pipes

On T-Bird

Arizona Mansions

My favorite Arizona Plants!

My Awesome Phone!

Grandma sent us home with tons of food for us and we are so grateful to her for how much she takes care of us.  She really is an incredibly compassionate person.  On our drive back to school we were going over the hoover dam on a bridge and saw a sign that said “Dam Bridge” and got a kick out of that.  But it was especially funny because at the time we were passing a car going the same direction as us that had a license plate that read “Big A.”  Forgive me for not being entirely appropriate but it was just so funny to us clean Mormons that we were on the “Dam Bridge” passing a car with a “Big A” license plate!

Anyway, it was a fantastic trip!  We love our family!