Thanksgiving break

Oh my goodness, I have not blogged in a long time. I figured I should at least put up a few photos from Thanksgiving. It was such a great break and one that was greatly needed! And now I am back to student teaching. I've only got 9 days left though and then I'm done with school forever!!! :) I can hardly wait!

As for Thankgiving, we stayed here and enjoyed the week off. We had dinner with Dan's sister, Anna, his brother, Ethan, and Ethan's wife, Tiana. It was a small group, but we had a great time and still managed to make enough food to feed twice that many people :). I even made my very first turkey! I was nervous, but it actually turned out really good! Dan was happy it was even moist! I did a lot of research online beforehand to help me figure out how to make the perfect turkey. It actually wasn't as hard as I thought.

Here we ladies are in the kitchen. It was a lot of fun baking together!

And here are the men. They jammed and played video games.

Ta da! And here's the delicious dinner. Unfortunately the turkey is behind me, but I really did make one!

And here is our lovely table. I made candy turkeys for everyone.

After dinner the boys did the dishes :) And then we all went to see "New Moon." I thought it was ok. I dunno, I just think the Twilight series make better books than movies. I know Dan was extremely bored... but such a great husband for still going with me! The funniest part of the movie was when Jacob, one of the characters, takes his shirt off and during this part the theater was silent, so Dan let out a loud "Ye-uh!" It was hilarious. Everyone in the theater started laughing. Oh that husband of mine- maybe you had to be there.

Then on Black Friday, Dan got up at 4 am to go to a store to get me my Christmas present. Ok he didn't really get up, he actually watched tv until about 3:15 am and then headed out shopping. He figured if he went to bed, he wouldn't have gotten up. And the whole time I was sound asleep. I have no idea what he got or what store he went to, but it must have been a pretty good deal for him to go to such measures. I'm excited to see what it is! I went shopping later that day with my sister, Noelle, (while Dan was home asleep) and it was horrible, I ended up buying things for just me! How could I resist? Gilmore Girls seasons were only $15 :)

On Saturday we went up to Logan to visit our new nephew named Logan. He is so cute! And then sunday morning we had another nephew born on Dan's side- his name is Donovan. We have yet to meet him (they live in Cali). But congrats Christian & Gina!

Anyway, it was a fabulous break!

happy early birthday, husband!

Look what we got Dan for his birthday/Christmas (50 inch plasma)!

I finally gave in... he's been talking about getting one for the past year! It's nice though, because this year I won't have to worry about what to get him for his birthday and christmas (they're only 15 days apart). I told him he should wait til December to use it, but that didn't happen. It was exciting to get him something that he really wanted, he definitely deserves it!

And thank you Noelle, for dating Jared, who works at Best Buy, who helped us find a great deal and a great tv :)

October

I always love the month of October. Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays and there are so many fun things to do! Here are some pics of a few of the things we did....

Went to Gardner Village with Dan's fam. I love that place! They decorate really cute for Halloween.

Carved pumpkins.

Here are our friends, Laura & Brandon.

Dan concentrating.

Our Pumpkin.

Their pumpkin.

Got lost in the corn maze!

A word of advice, don't go to a corn maze on the last day of the season, because all of the corn is trampled and you will have a hard time deciphering if a path was intended to be there or not. At least we had that problem. We also went in broad daylight, which made it very easy to find our way through- at least the weather was nice!

A few other things we did: celebrated my birthday, ate lots of halloween candy, passed out some of that candy to trick or treaters, watched halloween movies, and at my school we had a halloween parade and the kids were crazy! We are now looking forward to Thanksgiving and then Christmas! I just love the holidays!

family dinner

A few weeks ago we had a family dinner. It was 2 days before my birthday, so Dan schemed with my sister Noelle and surprised me with a cake. Here are a few photos from it. These are more for my mom than anyone. Hope you like them, Mom! We missed you & dad, as always :)

Here is some of the fam- amazingly almost everyone fit in the kitchen!

Cute Ryan being Batman, Jannifer, and my green wall.
Grandma & Noelle. Grandma is always so stylish! She even has highlights, you just can't see them all that well in this pic.
I tried to get Chase to smile... didn't really work. But he looks very cute in his pj's!

Classic Noelle face. Pretty sure they stole my camera for this shot.

Ethan, the cute ghost cake made by Noelle & Jared, and me. Ethan is ready to blow out the candles for me!

Wall Art

So I've been wanting to put some type of art above our couch in our living room. I didn't really want to go out and spend a fortune, so this is what I did...

I got the idea from Better Homes and Gardens. I love their website. And here is a closer look...

Ok mine don't look quite as good as theirs, but it still saved me money and I had fun doing it. I've also been wanting to put something above our bed. But Dan never wanted to because he didn't want it falling on his head. So this is what I came up with...

Vinyl lettering! It says "Always kiss me goodnight". Now i just need a beautiful headboard and the look would be complete :) And Dan doesn't have to worry about this falling on his head.