Thanksgiving Day

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving this year. We had a great day and you can see a sampling of the food we had above. My sister and her husband have tried their best to give Violet as much organic and unprocessed food as possible, so we tried to do our best to stick with that for Thanksgiving. There were, of course, several things that snuck in that didn't fit the bill (like my parmesan artichoke dip or Grandma's chocolate pie!). The stuffing that Mat and I made came from organic whole wheat bread and we used organic celery, onions and parsley. The carrots were organic and the turkey was straight from a farm where he lived his days roaming freely. Overall, I think we did pretty good. I think we all ate too much, but what a great day we had. It was fun to celebrate our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with the people we're so thankful for everyday.

Salt Lake City

Last weekend Mat and I took a little drive down to Salt Lake City. Not only did we get to see our cousin on his birthday, we also got to spend a good part of the weekend with one of my oldest friends and her family.

Friday night we spent with Jeff since it was his birthday. His mom and dad came down for the occasion and we all went to his favorite sushi place. We had such a great time catching up and they dined on what looked to be delicious sushi! I had some tasty chicken and was quite pleased with my choice. I'm not much of a sushi girl. :)

The next morning we woke up and made our way to the Armstrongs by lunch time. My favorite - eating time! We went to El Taco Nazo - delicious! The kids seem to have grown so much since we saw them at the wedding this summer. Gracie is just running around everywhere and Sean is becoming quite the big boy. After lunch, Mat and I headed to IKEA while the kids napped and Sarah and Matt probably did too! We were desparately trying to find some cheap window coverings since we have several windows with nothing on it since our new windows were put in. We had a successful trip to IKEA and now we have some great Roman Shades.

That afternoon, Mat and Matt took a few trips around the block on a bicycle built for two. It was one of the best sites I've ever seen!
That night Sarah made us some delicious lasagna and Matt made some not so delicious OSU punch to drink as we watched the OSU game. Mat and I each had a glass of the punch and switched to beer after that! Some of their friends came over with their kids, so we had a houseful. The ladies of the bunch played SingStar and the men watched the game. We ended up singing until the wee hours of the night and noticed Matt was missing. It's hard work being a dad. :)

The next morning Sarah, Gracie and I headed out to do some shopping at the Park City Outlet Mall. She had a lot more luck than I did finding some Christmas gifts for family members. I ended up with nothing, but it was sure fun to look. Us girls had lunch at a bagel shop that was yummy! Mat went to meet up with Jeff and they went to a swap meet. I'm not sure what they were looking for, but I don't think they found it!

When we got back to town, it was time for a little ice skating. I haven't skated since I was probably in junior high, so it was basically like my first time. Mat had never skated before and neither had Sean. Sarah and Gracie cheered us on from the sidelines. Here I am on my one and only lap around the rink.
Mat did great and caught on pretty fast. He definitely wasn't as good as Matt who is a great skater. The two of them went around the rink many times holding Sean's hands as he got used to skating on the ice. By the end of our time there, Sarah had signed Sean up for lessons. He had his first lesson last week and loved it!


That night Sarah made us Fettucini Alfredo and again, dinner was delicious! We really appreciated the meals they made for us. We also got fresh lettuce from their garden that was yummy.

There are a few more pictures if you click on the picture above of Sarah and Gracie.

The next day we had to head out. But not before we had a quick lunch at a delicious burger place - Five Guys Burgers - or something like that. YUM! The fries were to die for.

We're already thinking about when we can come back. It's so great to see everyone and we had the best time! Thanks again for spending the weekend with us!

Saturday!

I'm so happy for Saturdays! I slept in today and now just did a little a laundry. I think I might make up a grocery list and then play with Photoshop a bit. I'm still learning the ins and outs of it - my sister loaned me Photoshop Elements to see if I like it. I haven't really done anything but start trying to organize my pictures.

So that's my plan! Mat is taking a much deserved nap and when he gets up, we'll probably go clean my work and then my family for some delicious mexican food. I've been looking forward to this all week!

I think I might run over to Linens and Things to see what they have left. They are going out of business (I think everywhere) and had marked down a lot of stuff. I found some great shades for our windows, but I only bought two because I wanted to test them out at home and see how I really liked them. So I might go back. It's not really something I want to spend money on, but I am kind of tired of not having blinds or curtains on most of our windows. I do like to have some privacy!

First things first, I better shower. Have a great weekend!

Picture Time!

I thought I might update tonight by posting some pictures from recent weeks. To start, you can see that our leaves our changing. It is officially fall here! You can also see why Boise is called the City of Trees. Mat and I took a little hike up to Camel's Back Mountain (which is really not even close to a mountain) to take some pictures. The capitol building is a little over a mile away from where we were standing.
The sun was starting to set, so we got some fun colorful pictures of the leaves. We're both still learning our new camera and this was fun to try different settings. I think we need quite a few more experimental weekends before we feel like we know what we are doing.

We did go visit our great friends in Austin a few weeks ago. I left my smaller camera there and Joy has to ship it back to me. What was I thinking? I did get a couple fun ones with our nice camera. This little rascal wouldn't stay put long enough for me to get a great shot. But Chapa sure was a cute little kitten!

This guy sat still long enough for me to take a picture at lunch.

Same with his wife!
And this sweet thing was the perfect model. How can you resist that sweet face?

We sure had a great time in Austin, but spent so much time talking and catching up that we didn't take hardly any pictures. Oh, I just don't know why I do that. I'm determined to take a million picures when we go to Salt Lake City in a few weeks. There are two VERY cute subjects there that I know like to have their pictures taken.

One week until the election! Mat and I are going to vote absentee this year. We're trying to support the counties' vote by mail that they would like to get passed in the legislature. Plus, it will be fun to look up things as we vote on the computer. We probably should get to that pretty quickly...

New Windows!

The windows are in our house! They look great and I can't wait to enjoy this fall weather with them open for the next few weeks. Mat said it took them most of the day to install them, but they were in by the time I was home from work. We have our big window open right now and it is lovely! The rest we can't open until tomorrow, I guess they want to make sure everything is totally dry and sealed. So that's okay - we've lived long enough without being able to open them! It's crazy how clean they are though. We've never cleaned our other windows, mostly because we couldn't open them. I never thought I would be so exciting about windows!

Dinner is cooking - we made a penne casserole that we really like. I'm ready to eat!

Not much is new at home. The windows are probably going to be our big story for the next few weeks. We are just way too crazy sometimes. :) Bye for now!

Composting Fun

Here is Mat, hard at work on our compost bin. Since we have decided to create a larger garden next year, we thought we would try our hand at a compost bin. Mat did a great job and created the largest compost bin I've ever seen. Maybe not ACTUALLY the largest, but it sure seemed big after he was all finished.

The boards off to the side actually slide in the front as we get more materials in the bin. You can see what we have already composting here:
Looks fun, huh?
And here is our lovely little pumpkin gradually turning orange. It hasn't grown much larger, so I guess it will just be a tiny pumpkin. It is still pretty cute though!

I'm back from my conference and I sure am glad. I'm not the biggest fan of being away from my wonderful hubby for 6 days! We're going to spend the next couple days together and then I'll go back to work on Tuesday. Until next time...

Happy Birthday to Justis!