Traditions With the Danas

Yeah I know. It's Christmas and we're talking about Thanksgiving. It's just because I'm lazy.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because you don't have to worry about getting presents or getting the right costume. All you have to worry about is food! We have the most traditions with my mom's side of the family during Thanksgiving. On Wednesday we go to my aunt Stacy's house and stuff the turkey. This is a tradition we have done ever since I can remember.

We also take pictures of all the new babies and hold them up by the turkey. I'm pretty sure we have a picture of every baby in my family with a turkey. This is a goofy tradition, but we love it! 

Then on Thursdays we go to my Grandparents house and stuff ourselves with as much food as we can eat!  

This is a picture of our Thanksgiving dinner last year. This year it was just my family, my aunt's family, and my grandparents. 

The best part of Thanksgiving is on Saturday. On Saturday we go back to my grandparents and have a mexican feast. We use the leftover turkey and make flautas, eat enchiladas, and down our 'family secret' salsa.  Thanksgiving is the best!

The Season of Food

First off, I'm sorry I took so long to post, but I'm not going to give you a lame excuse because I hate when people do that.  (Me and my siblings made Thanksgiving dinner all by ourselves.) So this is just going to be a quick little post. 

In my opinion, Thanksgiving has always been one of the "big three" holidays:  Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.   Some of the things we do around Thanksgiving are:

Drive up Provo Canyon. 

Make Thanksgiving dinner all together.  (16 pies!) 

Shove our faces with delicious food.  (I made that turkey!) 

And then, though it's not really Thanksgiving, the day after, we set up Christmas decorations. 

My Thanksgiving traditions.

 My many Thanksgiving traditions are:  Playing in the leaves at our park.

Having dinner with the cousins.

This was all made out of candy.

 Every year we go to Las Vegas!  All my cousin, aunts and uncles, come from everywhere and we have a huge dinner at my Aunt Dyana's house.  It is so fun!  We also swim!  I LOVE Thanksgiving!

This is only half of my cousins!

Not my thing

So, Halloween has never really been my thing. I mean seriously! You walk around for a couple hours, have to wear a uncomfortable costume, and usually (depends where you are) you get really crappy candy. Don't get me wrong, when I was younger I had fun, but I think my dad's fun hating spirit has rubbed off on me a little. I think I rather stay home, watch a movie, and be the awesome house that gave out a lot of candy. And watching scary movies? Not my thing. I like watching fun little cartoons about Halloween, but watching a horror movie is like paying somebody to haunt you for the rest of your life. Kind of a waste. But, I do like carving pumpkins. For some reason I think it's so much fun! Except, I refuse to used the paper cut outs that make the pumpkins look professional. It's totally cheating! So, usually my pumpkin looks like the five-year-old's pumpkin and my little sibling's pumpkins look like it was done by me. Here are a couple pictures of some of my Halloween costumes.

This is in 2011 and this was my last year of trick-or-treating. That year we had all used old costumes from the basement. I was a Mexican. Don't ask me where I got that idea from because I have no clue. I used my mom's old dance pants a.k.a trash bag pants and then wore a Mexican looking shirt. I also painted my face to look like I had a mustache.

I think it was either 2005 or 2006 in this photo. My mom actually was going to buy me a princess costume, but I refused and told her I wanted to be a ninja like Cody. For the record, my ninja costume was so much cooler looking than Cody's costume. ;) So, that's a little about my Halloween experiences.

                                                   

Yes I'm 14 And I Still Trick or Treat. DON'T JUDGE ME!

Tis the season to go into a sugar coma.

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.  But it's not the fall air (I never got to enjoy that in Vegas) or scary stories, or haunted houses, (those are both awesome!) or even the candy candy candy.  Oh wait.  No it is the candy.  But my second favorite Halloween tradition.

Halloween movies.

My dad happens to be a movie genius.  He's like the Stephen Hawking of the movie world.  But, you know.  Without all the physical disabilities.

Halloween Favorites.  Lets start with the classics.

Ichabod Crane, Garfield, and Charlie Brown.  Technically these are Halloween specials, not movies, but I've loved them since I was a kid.  But lets get down to the real stuff. 

Bill Murray.  Need I say more? 

Saw this one for my first time this year.  Almost wet my pants.  Don't mock me!  Have you every seen it?  If you're mocking me, you haven't.  Because you don't know.  

Perfect combination of hilariously funny, and mortally terrifying. 

What's better then mocking detectives? 

We watched this one as a whole family this year.  Halfway through Becca shouts through her hands, "I'M NEVER WATCHING THIS MOVIE AGAIN!" 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat some candy, and I'm going to enjoy it, because I won't be going trick or treating again.  Because I would be fifteen, and that's way to old to go trick or treating! 

I can't go trick-or-treating anymore. :(

I dressed up as Tinkerbell in 2005.  I thought I was pretty cool!  I love getting candy!   I do not have any funny stories with Halloween.  I just thought I would share the pictures of my Halloween costumes.

2007….. I was a flapper girl!

2009.. I was a Gypsy.

2010… I was a spider girl.

2011… I was a crazy woman. :)

2012… I did not dress up, but Kyla did! :)

It's official...I'm a murderer!

Have you ever had to kill an animal? Well I have, three times! For those of you who don't know, chickens only lay eggs for three years and then stop laying. So when they stop laying they are no use and we have to kill them. Well, my dad decided that he wanted me and Cody to kill our nine chickens as a "chore" which, really just means that he doesn't want to do it and wants to torture us. So, one boring summer day I trudged outside with gloves and a garbage bag to put the chickens in. After five minutes of chasing two chickens I carried them over to the car, started it, and held the garbage bag up to the exhaust pipe. When the bag fills up with  the carbon monoxide that's when the chickens start screaming and whaling around. This horrific sound last for ten of the longest seconds of my life! Then once they're dead I picked up the bag a threw it in the garbage. Then I walked back to the chicken coop to get my next victims. This time Cody  came with me and had a brilliant idea to throw them all in the bag so we would only have to do it one more time, so we put the remaining seven chickens in the bag and heaved it back over to the car. This time the chickens reacted a lot faster and the cackled was ten times as worse. Worst thing I've done in my life. So far.

I've also saved an animal's life even though some people (cough) Garren say I was trying to murder it. This story begins on a normal Saturday morning. I was mowing the lawn when I stopped it to ask Cody a question. While we were talking all the sudden we heard a very loud meow coming from the lawn mower. We paused, questioning what we heard and then sifted through the bag of grass and looked in the lawn mower top to bottom. When we found nothing we went back to work with no explanation of what happened. Then when I was dumping out the grass I heard another meow. I looked through the grass and found nothing, so I patted down the bag and found a secret compartment. There I found one of our little kittens Rosalind shaking in fear. If I wouldn't have found her she probably would have died. I'm a hero!

I've had TONS of pets. Here's a list of how many I've had in my life. I've had....
1 gerbal
2 fish
2 bunnies
3 dogs
15 cats
and 30 chickens. Not including all the snakes me and Cody used to catch. I think that's all. Pets can be fun but I've had so many that I think I'm good for a while. So, those are a few of my pets.


 

My pets!

This is one of my neighbors horses.

I have always wanted a horse! They are one of my favorite animals! They are amazing creatures! I have never had one though. Which makes me sad. :(

     My dad likes pets, but he dose not like them ruining his yard or his house.  Kyla and I begged him to let us get hamsters. We made a presentation and he decided to let us get one. We were so excited. We got 3 hamsters and 2 cages. We named them Vanilla, Pistachio, and Peanut Colada. We had 2 hamsters in one cage and the other hamster in the other cage. We had had our hamsters for a couple of months, when one morning we woke up and Peanut Colada was eating Vanilla! It was terrible. :( That was a horrible day! After that we had the 2 hamsters in different cages. Every night the wheels that they ran on would squeak and Kyla and I could not go to sleep. We decided to oil the wheels with olive oil. Not a good idea. We oiled it to much and the hamsters licked it all off and died! :( Next we got bunnies! They are so cute and are very playful. I have also want a dog, and a cat.

This is Kyla's bunny: Jasmine.

This is my bunny: Ebony.

We Adopted A Cannibal Mouse

Let me back up.

When I was six, or thereabouts, I wanted a pet.  My older sister Abbie had a Guinea Pig, and I thought it was unfair that I couldn't have a pet.  Together, me and my younger brother Connor launched a plan to annoy my parents into letting us have a pet.  It worked.  My parents took us to the pet store, and got me the cheapest animal they could find.  (Besides goldfish, which don't count as pets.)  A mouse.  I was thrilled!  I worshiped that mouse.  It was my life.  My purpose.  I named her Jenny.

If you put food in your shirt pocket she would crawl in

My parents also adopted one for Connor.  (Don't ask me what the difference is between buying a mouse, and adopting a mouse.  I don't know.)  The adopted mouse was what they call a "fancy mouse."  Connor named her Minnie.

Weeks passed.  

I woke up one morning, and went to check on my Jenny, as I did every morning.  

I couldn't believe what I saw.  

Minnie, Connor's horrible mouse, was EATING my Jenny!  

JENNY!  My life!  My hope!  My dreams!  I immediately wanted to smash Minnie.  Wring her scrawny little neck.  Flush her down the toilet.  I assure you I would have felt no remorse.  In heaven if I ever run into Minnie, I will feed her to a snake.  

Instead of gruesomely killing Minnie, (as I should have) I ran downstairs, bawling, to my dad and told him that Connor's mouse had eaten mine.  

Once my dad actually saw it, and new I wasn't making it up, he took me to the store again.  I got a new mouse, but since Minnie was adopted, because of some weird pet law, we couldn't return her.  But my dad bought Connor a new one to.  

We went home and put Minnie the cannibal in her own cage, which was just a plastic bin, and put Minnie II (Connor's new mouse(not a fancy mouse)) and Jenny againy (my new mouse(real nice name, huh)) in the actual mouse cage.  

Uneventful weeks passed. 

Jenny againy got fat.  She holed up in her little mouse home, and Minnie II put newspaper shreds in front of it so we couldn't see inside.  

More weeks passed. 

Turns out Minnie II was Mickey.  Yeah.  A boy.  We had mouse twins.  Smallest cutest things you have ever seen.  (And I don't say cute a lot, so that makes these even more cute!)  We had to put Mickey in another plastic container, since fathers are know to kill the babies.  So now we had five mice in three cages.  You should have smelled our room!  

That's about the story, except one night I woke up and Minnie was in Mickey's cage.  

We've also had a rabbit, fish(again, don't count),  goats, and chickens.  But those are other stories. 

Me and Minnie 

I love food. It's absolutely delicious! My favorite food has got to be steak. A nice juicy t-bone is perfect for a yummy Sunday dinner.

Among my favorite foods are Panda Express', chow mien and orange chicken,










cheesy peperoni pizza,

   

and raspberries. Oh how I love raspberries! When I was eight I had asked for them for my birthday. I got three boxes of them and was in pure heaven.
      To be honest after I thought about it, I don't love the subject being on food. But, I was eating some delightful cereal when my mom gave me the idea and it sounded really good at the time.                                                                                                                     

Food!

 I love food! I don't have a favorite, but I will tell you what foods I don't like. I don't like tomatoes. They are just...... I am not going to say. :) I can't think of any other food right now. I really like salad, fruit, vegetables, treats, and so much more! I don't really like to post on food, because I don't know what to say? I will just say I really like food!

I really like watermelon!

This is one on the cakes I made.

I really like the dog Border Collies!

Here is another cake!

I really like strawberries!