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!