a gift and temple lights

will surprised me with the best early christmas present... a piano!

it is so beautiful! we had talked about maybe starting out with a keyboard,

because the price tag on those are much smaller...

but will went above and beyond and had this beauty delivered right to our living room!

i came in from a photo shoot and he quickly blindfolded me and led me in to see it.

i was so happy! he is the best gift giver, always blows me away with his gifts!

i've been playing christmas music on it everyday since the beginning of december.

i can't wait to teach our kids to play someday and sing songs together on family night. :)

earlier this month i was downtown when they turned the christmas lights on at temple square.

it was packed but such a pretty sight so i walked around and took some pictures.

if you live near salt lake or are just driving through, make a stop to see these!

you will be happy that you did. :)

grandmas and a date night

in our ward, i work with the young women (12-18 year old girls).

this past wednesday the girls put on a "grandma appreciation night"at our church building
and they invited some of the elderly women in our ward.
i picked up one of the women who was absolutely adorable.
she has lived in this area for over 50 years and is the original owner of her house.
(that's amazing because in our area most of the homes were built in the early-mid 60's.)
talking to her during dinner i found out that her husband passed away in january...
she told me how they fell in love at a church dance, were snowbirds in arizona every winter for the past 18 years, and how she is struggling to put up her christmas tree this year
because it will be her first one alone.
my heart just broke. i can't imagine the pain of losing your spouse,
especially after so many wonderful years together.
she was so open and honest though about the things she has experienced in life.
i love that our ward is full of a lot of elderly people. they have SO many stories to tell!
it was a great night and the soup and brownies we were served were delicious!


last night, i surprised will with a night out on the town.
he is going to be in san fran all weekend with his dad so I wanted to do something special before.
he was working so we met downtown at CPK for dinner then grabbed some hot cocoa. YUM!!!
then we tried to hunt down the "jingle bus" which goes through downtown during the holidays.
(it's a free trolley bus that picks people up and drives them past the big light displays.)

 while we were waiting for the jingle bus, trax stopped in front of us.
we were so cold that we just decided to be spontaneous and hopped on.
it took us through downtown, past temple square and the malls.

we got off at the "Off Broadway Theatre" in downtown salt lake and picked up tickets to this play.
it was called "It's a Wondrous Life" and was a comical version of "It's a Wonderful Life".

they performed in this cute little theatre that even had balcony seats.
it brought back so many memories of the high school play and musical i was in.
drama is such a fun thing to watch and participate in. i would love to do it again!
it was such a fun date night!

friendsgiving

we have a tradition with our friends each year to have a pre-thanksgiving dinner together.

everyone brings a side dish or dessert to share and we feast!

this year we hosted it at our house and had to bring in 3 long tables just to fit everyone.

we're so grateful to have so many great friendships. we cherish all of them!

my friend olivia (who i met in a photo class) came this year.

she is such a fun girl! i love making new friends in my classes.

our gang just keeps expanding and we want to keep it that way.

good friends are hard to come by so we feel beyond blessed for all of them.

we also had a fun time celebrating the actual day of thanksgiving with will's family.

hope everyone else is having a great thanksgiving weekend as well!

the question

yesterday at church, our bishop asked us this question:

"what if tomorrow you wake up with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?"

that really got me thinking. how quickly i am to ask for things i want or feel i need...

when the beautiful reality is that i've got SO many blessings all around me already!

in honor of Thanksgiving this week, i want to list a few of those on my blog. :)

1. my love. i've never met anyone who gets me like he does. he's seriously my everything.

2. a place to call home. 

3. freedom.

4. ability to get an education.

5. both me and will's health.

6. the gospel and our own testimonies.

7. 4 great parents and lots of siblings who love us.

 8. our awesome friends who love us for who we are.

9. our 3 dogs who love to cuddle and keep us entertained.

i could go on and on...

there are so many positives in life and we are so grateful for them!

happy thanksgiving everyone!

pine trees

this morning my sweetie and i met up for breakfast in our old neighborhood.

afterwards, we went to a nearby park full of pine trees and snapped some pictures.

i've been wanting to take a few more pictures outside before it gets too cold.

well.... the cold beat me because it was freezing this morning!

we literally ran to the car and cranked up the heater after we took these.

it was worth it though for these shots of my handsome hubby. :)

here's to a great weekend!

mexican thanksgiving dinner

my parents came into town this week to go to a dental convention and visit us.

we had them and my 2 brothers living in Utah over for dinner last night.

we decided since we wouldn't be down for Thanksgiving we should do a pre-feast!

we ended up going with mexican food for dinner and i'm glad we did!

letitia made delicious beef enchiladas and i whipped up some spanish rice, beans, and corn.

it was a loud fun time! it's always good getting together with this bunch.

 it's a little blurry but that's the gang! crazy to think this isn't even 1/3 of my family.

 all the kids used to be terrified of dogs but got brave and loved giving max treats for doing tricks.

 then the kids found will's drum set and we had a mini concert in our basement.

 things were obviously starting to get a little crazy ha.

edumacation and snow!

will just applied to the University of Utah yesterday, hoping to start next fall semester.

we won't know if he's going there for sure until February, but i'm so proud of him for not settling!

he is the most hard-working guy and already a great provider for our little family.

the business he's running now has been a great source of income and huge blessing for us,

but it's definitely not something he wants to do long term because he isn't passionate about it.

he is planning on studying Exercise and Sports Science, 

then choosing between physical therapy or chiropractor school after. 

his dream job is to work with college athletes helping to rehabilitate them back into the game.

i'm so proud of him for dreaming big. he's going to do so many great things in his lifetime!

in other news, we already got our first snow of the year! november 3rd.

i'd forgotten how gorgeous the clean, white snow looks outside.

it was our lab Max's first experience in the snow and he was having a blast!

it melted by the middle of the afternoon but i'm sure more will be back soon!

i wonder if we'll get more at our new house since it's closer to the Great Salt Lake.

believe it or not, I'm excited for the storms to come. nothing beats a white Christmas!

rub-a-dub-dub

it's no secret that we love our dogs. let's be honest though, 

when you hear a thud in your bathroom and walk in to this how can you not?

nap time, max's style.

spook-tacular

for family night this week, we carved a pumpkin. probably alittle too early... 

because it's teeth have shrunk to almost nothing and the rest of the face is sinking in. oh well.

this is the 4th year we've been carving buddies! and even though he doesn't enjoy scooping the slimy seeds out like i do, i do love watching him making this face each year: 

we threw an early halloween party at our house for our close friends last night.

it was loads of fun! so many great costumes, yummy snacks, and fun games.

we're so glad for everyone who came and made it such a blast!

 here are some decoration/ party pictures we took:

happy (almost) halloween!