Ice Skating and Pizza

On Christmas Eve, the whole family got together to ice skate. This was so much fun and it was cute to see the kids try it.




Everyone taking a break.



Skating with Sage. She kept telling me that she skated before when she was little. Sage is such a sweet girl and has grown up so much since the last time we saw her.



Nic, Emily, Ben, Sarah, Amber, Matt



The girls seemed to love walking on the ice.



Pizza time! What a fun day!

Garcias

I was so excited to be in Arizona and have some real Mexican food! I have withdrawals and Matt encourages me to get it out of my system while I can. So, here we are at Garcias with my family.





This is my papa and grandma.





YUM! The twins loved the food and had to dip their quesadilla in the salsa...they like it spicy!

Late Night Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we were in Michigan, just Matt and I. Matt slept all day since he had worked 30 hours the day and night before. I spent the day watching Christmas movies, talking to my family, and worrying about making a good dinner. I have never made my own Thanksgiving dinner so this was a big step. I even made my own stuffing...which I was pretty proud of. We ended up eating when Matt woke up around 8pm, but it was still Thanksgiving for us! He was very impressed with the meal and we have plenty of leftovers, which are the best part anyways! It was a nice quiet day and I am very grateful for all of my blessings.

I should have taken a picture of it to prove my wonderful meal, but you will just have to take my word for it.

Leaf clean up

In our city they pick up your leaves if you rake them to the curb. (I know, pretty nice huh?) So, we realized that we have quite the mess of leaves in the backyard that need to be raked out front. Anyways, I got quite excited with the prospect of running through the leaves and playing in them since I have never really done that. Matt was kind enough to rake me a pile to play in.




Ready, set,...go!




So much fun!

Fall leaves

A couple of weeks ago I got to ride the bus a couple of times to work since my car was in the shop. The leaves were so pretty and it made the walk more interesting.



This is a house covered in leaves.

Corn Maze

If you remember last Halloween we went to a haunted forest which was not a good experience for me! Anyways, Matt LOVES Halloween and all of the festivities that go with it so we tried something new and different this year. We went to the nighttime corn maze (why does it always have to be night)? The maze wasn't all that exciting and it was raining but at least we can say that we did something fallish that didn't involve a man chasing me through a haunted forest.




There was a random house flipped upside down in the maze. I guess it was setting the mood?

Carving Pumpkins

This has become a tradition for us the Monday before Halloween. We are lucky that we live in a cooler climate that allows us to carve pumpkins more than a day before Halloween. It is fun for us to pick out our pumpkins, carve them, admire our work, and cook the seeds!




Before the carving



After the carving



All done...Matt's mummy.



Days later after the squirrels enjoyed it.



Amber's ghost after carving...



Post squirrel feeding...mine wasn't as tasty as Matt's!



All lit up! Happy Halloween!