Lil' Dean Fam

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends and family.   I am grateful for many things.   Family is probably first on the list for me.  I'm so grateful for our little family.  Colin and I love being parents to our crazy boys and he's a great husband.  I am grateful for my extended family near and most of them far.  I miss them and I love them all.  Friends are so important in my life.  I'm grateful for all that I have both near and far! I'm grateful for this beautiful world that we live in and for the opportunity I have had to explore parts of it.  I wish I could spend more time traveling because I do enjoy seeing new places.  I am grateful for my health even though it's a fight every day against this body of mine.  I'm grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I'm thankful to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Being a member of this church IS who I am and I am thankful for that....

Ryan and the rest of the 4th graders at SAS had their UN day this week.   They dress up in traditional clothing, bring in food to share, have an assembly and learn from the parents about something cultural from their home nations.   I was bringing in food and presenting a cultural lesson for Ryan's class so I figured I may as well make a whole day of it and come for the assembly too.  There were selected classes who presented a little bit about UN day to the rest of their class.  It was student led and very good.  I was glad I was able to attend.   The whole 4th Grade sang the song "Agents of Change" at the end.   After the assembly we had a luncheon.  I brought in my snickerdoodles and we enjoyed a lot of food from around the world.   Then the kids had recess and afterward I presented a lesson and activity on Thanksgiving and The Mayflower.  I taught the kids a little bit about why we celebrate Th...

Ryan participated in his second Rain Gutter Regatta this week.  He designed, built, and painted the boat completely on his own.  He had a lot of fun racing his boat too.

The boys had their primary program today.  Actually, so did I! Since I'm kind of in charge of the primary, I think I was probably way more nervous than they were.  This morning we left our house super early at 8:00 am.  We cruised down to the Stake Center to be a part of Summer's blessing.  The "other" Dean family leaves Singapore in a week and man, we are sure going to miss that bunch!   After Summer's blessing we headed over to our building to set up and get ready for our program.  While walking around, Evan slipped and got his shorts ALL dirty!  BOYS!  :)  While I was setting up for our program, we received word that there was a really bad accident on the freeway.  Half of our ward was affected by the traffic jam as a result.  The drive that usually takes about 30 minutes took some families well over an hour!  We delayed sacrament meeting for as long as we could and the counselor conducting did his be...