Thanksgiving Break

Whoa! Long post full of pictures.

We are back into the swing of school but we did have a fabulous break.  At Midwestern the quarter ends in the middle of November so we get two weeks off for Thanksgiving.  To celebrate the end of classes a few of us got together for a pot luck dinner the last day of finals.  Here are a bunch of the wives so happy to have our husbands back for a couple of weeks!

Then we headed off to Utah to be with family for the rest of the break.  We drove and stayed in St. George the first day.  It was the perfect amount of driving for my pregnant self and a little toddler who doesn't enjoy car rides.  We were able to hang out with my good friend Emily who lives there.  She was so nice to make dinner for us and to let us hang out for a while.   Austin loved playing with her little girls! We were able to catch up and bring back memories of our BYU days.

Then we made it to Orem and stayed with my grandparents for a night while we hung out in Provo for a day. First we were able to make it to a cousins party!  Ever since I was a freshman at BYU my grandparents have had a monthly cousins party for all the cousins either living in the area or attending college in the area.  They are so fun and we happen to be in town to make it this month!
While in Provo we were also able to see our good friends Steve and Andelyn. We had babies around the same time so it was so cute to watch them play together now that they are a little older.
We also made time to go up to campus! I love walking around BYU campus. It brings back so many good memories and it's where Matthew and I met!  We first went to breakfast with my sisters who are currently students there.  Ciera is a senior and Kayla is a freshman. We went to Kayla's dorm room and then to the bookstore.

This is Kayla and Austin walking to the dorms. 

Funny picture!  In the dorm hallway Austin saw this sign and said, "A tent, a tent!" and had to go inside.  Haha! Cute boy.

Then we drove out to Salt Lake for the rest of the break to stay with Matthew's parents.  As always, Austin takes some time to warm up to family that he hasn't seen in a while.  However, he loved all the new toys available. He spent countless hours playing with the cars and trucks available.  This is what he looked like for the majority of the time there:

We taught Austin about snow while we were there and he was fascinated with it.  He loves seeing it on the tops of the mountains and especially when it did actually snow one night. He stood there by the door telling Aubrey and Nonna all about it.

Austin also loved playing with his cousin Aaron.  They are about 10 months apart. We took them to open gym one day where they got to play on all the gymnastics equipment. Mostly they both loved playing cars and trains together. It was so cute to hear them laughing together.  We took them to build-a-bear at the Gateway Mall one night to get an accessory for the puppy dogs that Nonna gave them.  Both boys I think were more into the strollers there than anything! Then we stopped by the huge Christmas tree to take a picture. 

Spending time with Nonna and Pa.

One night we got a baby sitter and all the adults went to down town Salt Lake for a nice dinner and walk around Temple Square.  That is actually the first time I have ever left Austin with a teenage babysitter! I usually just baby swap with someone, but everything went great and it was so nice to have a group date night.

Here I am about 30 weeks along and Aubrey is 18 weeks.

We met up with my sisters one afternoon for lunch at my favorite soup and salad place, Zupas.  I just had to make sure we made a stop there!  And I found out they are building one here in AZ, woohoo!  Lunch was fantastic and I loved being able to spend time with my sisters.

On Thanksgiving day we were able to spend time with both of our families. Around noon, we went to my Grandma Black's house and had a fabulous dinner with my sisters and the aunts, uncles and cousins on my dad's side. Austin  kind of freaked out when we walked into a house full of people he doesn't really know but Grandma came to the rescue in bringing out toy trucks and blocks.  We tried to get a family pictures but Austin didn't really cooperate.  Grandma Black put on a wonderful dinner and I was able to catch up with a lot of family that I haven't seen in a while. 

Sisters at Thanksgiving

Next, we stopped by the Mt. Timp temple just for a few minutes since it is near my Grandma's house.  Austin is really into temples right now and loves to see temple pictures and sing the temple song. The AZ temple is a little far away so I wanted him to be able to see and walk around a real temple. 

Then we drove down to Provo for Matthew's family's Thanksgiving in the evening.  It was the perfect way to end our Thanksgiving. Everything was set up so nicely and there were a lot of people we hadn't seen for a while.  There were actually so many people we didn't even get a chance to talk to everyone! Again, Austin didn't like the crowd but he warmed up a little, especially when Dallin pulled up Elmo on his phone. We didn't get a group shot of everyone but we loved spending time with family.  My sisters even stopped by at the end to say hi and that sure did change the evening...

...Ciera and Kayla were planning on spending the night at Ciera's apartment since all of their roommates were out of town for Thanksgiving so they asked me if I wanted to have a slumber party with them.  At first I said no since I needed to get back to my in-laws house to put Austin to bed and to pack up all our stuff for our drive home the next day.  But Matthew reminded me that he did have a boys night earlier in the week (consisting of him and his brothers playing video games all hours of the night with pizza, soda, candy, etc) so he encouraged me to have a girls night and that he would get everything packed up and come pick me up on our way out of town.  So I totally went on a whim and had so much fun!

We went to a late night movie at the Provo dollar theater and stayed up late at night talking. I slept on Ciera's roommate's bed and Kayla brought in the couch cushions and crashed on the floor.  I think this was the first time ever that I have been able to wake up without having Austin there.  I even slept until 8:00am.  I'm not sure the last time that happened!  I made french toast for them in the morning and we decided to hit the mall!  None of us have ever done the shopping thing on black Friday but the Black Sisters cannot seem to get together without having shopping involved!  We all got an amazing deal on matching jeans at the Gap.  Not that I can wear mine currently but that's ok. Then we met up with Matthew and Austin for lunch on BYU campus (Thank you Kayla for your dining plus card!) and I was welcomed to a fully packed car and two cute boys who missed me! 

It was a fabulous trip crammed full of good times and now we are back and starting another tough quarter of classes.  This will probably be our hardest round of classes yet so... let's have a baby during this quarter! Yeah, not sure what we were thinking.  But we have lots of support around us and we are getting so close (8 weeks!) to met this little girl.