Thankful

Oh, how I love Thanksgiving! I love setting aside time to give thanks to God for His many, many blessings. I love spending time with family and friends. And of course I love, love, love the food! We were so appreciative to Kyle and Terry for hosting a Thanksgiving celebration in their home and inviting us to come. It was a fantastic day! I sure hope you had a most wonderful day as well and I sure hope your dinner was as yummy as mine...



Okay, so this wasn't exactly my Thanksgiving dinner. But it was an appetizer course prepared just for me by this handsome fellow...


...Chef Ryne! These days if Ryne is happy to see you, you know it right away. He has the gift of making you feel like the most special person in the room and I love him oh-so-much!!

Onto the real grub!

When you get 38 people together, you are sure to have a feast! Yum!!


We even had three kinds of turkey. Here is Kristy's roasted turkey, Kyle did a smoked turkey, and Derek and I brought a fried turkey. I sampled all three and just couldn't pick a winner - they were delicioso!


And who could leave out desserts?? Mmmm, Mmmm....


We even had our choice of where we wanted to enjoy our feast!

In the living room...


In the garage...

You can see who ended up with this prime spot =) All of the sweet kiddos and sweet, sweet Mrs. Sue who is my friend Kristy's Mom and grandmother to four of the kiddos represented.

Avery was so proud of her turkey leg =)


And Joshua really really really wanted his picture taken - he is sooo adorable!


Or you could go with the traditional dining room...


We opted for spot #3 by default since that's where we found two chairs together unclaimed by anyone else =)


Then I went back to check on the kiddos in the garage and Mrs. Sue had them busily working on a Thanksgiving craft.



Here is Kade's finished product - too cute!


Jace was pretty proud of his turkey, too. =)


Before all of our Thanksgiving celebrations were over, Adri rounded everybody up for a group photo. So here are the people we were blessed to spend our Thanksgiving with (minus the fourteen others who had already left). It is so wonderful to get to do life with such amazing people. I think it's just amazing that outside of serving Jesus, we wouldn't know each other. God brought us all to the Northwest in different ways and brought us together through our desire to serve Him. Wow...

"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" 2 Corinthians 9:15



Now, for one more thing...

Since most stores were opening at midnight on Black Friday, I somehow managed to convince Derek that it would be fun to just go out and see what we could find.


He looks convinced, right? Ha!

No seriously, he was pretty excited about and had no idea what to expect since this was his first Black Friday experience. We decided to try Target first but when we arrived at midnight, we found a line wrapped around the store and the adjoining movie theater...and they were entering the store at a snail's pace. So we teamed up with our friends Vance & Molly and decided to go to Wal-Mart just across town since they opened at 10 p.m. About an hour later we returned to Target and were able to park and walk in without any trouble. We weren't really out for anything in particular but we did come home with a few movies, a couple of card games, a scarf, an air mattress, and...


...the basics, ha! It was the least crowded I have EVER seen the grocery section. =) Hooray for Black Friday success!!

Now I get to spend today just relaxing and enjoying the view.




Perfect.



(And cheering for the Tigers, of course.)

Up to Date...

Gosh, can you tell school is back in session and I am back in full-time teaching mode?? It's not that I haven't had time to blog, there just really hasn't been much to blog about. Life has been just wonderful and we are truly feeling blessed. We spend our weekdays working and our weekends enjoying each other's company. But I do have a few things to share with you if you're interested. So get ready, it's all so very exciting, ha!

We got to see one of our most favorite bands in concert - The David Crowder Band! They were in Seattle on their "7 Tour."





They've been one of our favorite bands forever and since this was their last tour, it was both exciting and sad at the same time...bittersweet. I was teary as the concert ended, but I am so glad we got to be there.


Fall arrived...and boy is it gorgeous! I got a few pictures of some gorgeous trees before this past weekend's storm blew through and took the majority of the leaves with it.







So far, this fall reminds me of the first fall we spent in Washington (Which was three years ago, can you believe that??) Our first fall wasn't very rainy and this one hasn't been either. We've had some spectacular days and I am once again in love with this state and once again in awe of our amazing Creator! And I must say that having some clear days for kiddos to get to play outside sure makes this preschool teacher happy!

We decided to become hippies and bought a van and are now living down by the river...



Just kidding =) But we did enjoy dressing up as hippies on Halloween and having a fun night with our LIFE Group. We spend every Monday night doing LIFE and Bible study with a group of fabulous people that we love dearly!!



I fell in love with these boots...I'm sure their style will come back around. Until then, I'll just enjoy breaking them out for costume parties. =)


Derek and I hit a big milestone...November 2 marked the anniversary of our very first date...10 years ago!! Yep, 10 years!! I am so blessed that I have been dating my best friend for the last ten years. We are more in love today than ever and I am anxiously looking forward to many, many, many more years of dating. Love you babe!



Well, I think that about does it - that's all the happenings in our world lately. We've had some fun times in between like bowling nights and game nights with friends, but I don't want to scare anyone by taking pictures everywhere we go...they might not invite me anymore if I do that, ha! Looking forward to our next adventure...who knows what it might be?? =)