Thanksgiving 2013

I love Thanksgiving and it is always so fun for me to prepare Thanksgiving dinner! We had a very low key celebration at home this past year. We spent time together remembering all that we have been blessed with. It was great. Just us, our Bear boy, and our friend Bob. I made the same turkey I made last year and it was F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S! Here is the recipe! I also tried a homemade cranberry sauce (recipe) and it was so easy and super yummy (and I don't even like cranberry sauce)! One more new recipe I tried was for a gravy made with the drippings from the turkey, oh.my.goodness. I'm not kidding, you need to make it! I was surprised that it was so good! If you make this gravy, get the fat separator, it is really useful.

A simple table with stuff we already had!

I love the natural light we get in our home. Grateful for desert sunshine! 

 recipe for cranberry sauce

recipe for gravy

Disneyland

We love having our annual passes to Disneyland! It is such a treat to be able to go whenever we want and not feel like we have to do everything. It enables us to meet friends and family when they go too. We like crashin parties!

 Carnation Cafe for breakfast! We do this every visit and I love our little tradition 

 We love visiting the parks during different holidays throughout the year! 

 The newlyweds! 

 Love this family of ours! 

 Don't mind the brightness... 

Cousin time! 

I got to meet up with this babe of a friend of mine! 

 How cute is miss Sofia?!

I got to meet miss Reba Bleu for the first time too! 

Baby Ruby

In November our besties had Ruby! We love that little girl and we are loving watching her grow. 

 They stopped by on the way to the hospital! It's go time (after a picture of course)! Poor Melanie, what a champ! 

 There she is! 

 Perfection

I love seeing him with babies!  Although he makes a cute uncle I can't wait to see him as a Daddy! 

Olympic Party Opening Ceremonies 2014

We had a super fun Olympic party with the youth from our church. I work with  the young women who are part of the leadership for girls camp this summer. These girls have been working hard and planning for a fabulous camp. We had an overnighter for leadership training and bonding time! Our camp theme is "Around The World", Young Women United! The language of the gospel is universal. This is the theme the girls picked and I am super excited about it. Our overnighter fell on the night of opening ceremonies and I immediately knew this should be our party theme. My friend, Tiffany, that works with me for this, suggested we do minute-to-win-it games for our own olympics. It turned out wonderfully! All the decor was SIMPLE SIMPLE and it turned out darn cute! We also did snacks from other places to go with our theme.

 Simple Olympic rings with green foam wreaths from Joanne's and cheap fabric wrapped around. I cut all the fabric in 2 inch strips then wrapped and hot glued it.

 I LOVED the flag banner. I found it on this great blog here

 I really wanted to make these earth oreo truffles but thought it would be difficult. 

IT WAS SO SIMPLE! I'll do a post on how to make them!

 Olympic torch aka mini cupcakes in mini ice cream cones, easy peasy

 Before we finished the set-up of our Italian soda bar

 Minute to win it games found here

The girls loved the games and they were hilarious!

Halloween 2013

Thanks to my friend Erinn, I decided (and copied her idea) to be a "super" family for halloween. Costumes were super easy and I had or made everything except the superman shirt. We went to our church halloween party one night and decided to switch costumes for a party the next night with friends. I thought it was hilarious and I was surprised Rob was down to go as wonder woman!

To Grandmother's house we go!

My Gma recently moved to the country. Literally. She lives pretty far from a major town and I love it! It is gorgeous and such a nice pace of simple living life! We got to go visit and it was such a fun visit and very relaxing.

 Hey, when in Rome...

A quick trip home

Rob had some time off in October so we decided to roadtrip it home for a few days. We had fun taking Bear to some of our favorite places. We went to Monterey, San Francisco, McArthur, and enjoyed family time at my parents. It was perfect.