Grandma Retired

My mom retired earlier this month. Retirement always seems like such a big deal to me. It's the ending of a very LONG chapter of life, a needfully selfless chapter of life. 

My parent's retirements leave me feeling extremely grateful for the sacrifice and service they have rendered for the betterment of their family. I needed to do something nice to show my mother in a small way how much I appreciate her in a big way.

After brainstorming with my siblings, we decided to meet in Salt Lake City the weekend after Thanksgiving to celebrate. My mom's birthday also happened to fall on this weekend, so we had much celebrating to do.

On Friday we all met up in SLC. We had planned to go out to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory and have our 2nd Annual Ugly Sweater Feast.

We had quite a wait to be seated at our table. (We do happen to be a HUGE group.) It provided the perfect opportunity to show off our sweaters and vote for ugliest sweaters in various categories. The Spaghetti Factory is in a small mall that wasn't very busy. So we made ourselves a catwalk and everyone modeled. Man, are we hot!

I spent the majority of dinner tallying votes with Wyett. It took forever. I had 13 prize categories and I made gourmet caramel apples for prizes. We also had lotions and body sprays for those non-sugar eaters (only Jamie) in our family.

Unfortunately, Shay and Cayben were back at the hotel sick as dogs, so I was trying to facilitate the voting while not losing a child. Picture taking just didn't happen.

Well except these few shots with Santa.

Solee, Kia, Bryce, Santa & Landen 

Heather, Me & Santa

Embrie, Bryce, Abby, Solee, Kia, Santa & Landen

Solee enjoyed the prize she won for having the Itchiest Ugly Sweater. She did have a shirt underneath, so I'm not a completely terrible mother.

Jamie arranged for a photographer to take our pictures on Saturday, my momma's birthday. I think I have the cutest nieces and nephews ever! While everyone was all together we made my mom crawl through the spanking machine. This is a birthday tradition in our family. Everyone lines up, and the special birthday person gets to crawl through a tunnel made by everyone standing with their legs spread while getting spanked. Poor mom. I think our family is brutal! She's a total good sport about it though.  Afterward we mostly split up and did our own thing for the afternoon.

We met up in the evening for dinner and to see the lights at Temple Square. If your planning to visit Temple Square during Christmastime, don't plan for the first weekend after Thanksgiving. We mostly just saw a lot of people. The temple is always beautiful though.

Apparently Shay is the only one who knows how to properly look at the camera when being photographed. 

Sunday morning we said our goodbyes and traveled our separate ways home.