Thanksgiving Week

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving this past week. We have so much to be grateful for :) My mom's sister, Mimi, and her family (the Clark's) came from New York to celebrate with us. We were so happy to have them here in AZ! The older girls (Jen, Jill, Bryn, and Tori) stayed at our place and everyone else stayed at my parent's.

I didn't get too many pictures on my camera because when Jill's around she is constantly snapping away! I hate to have all of the same pictures as her so I let her take care of the picture taking :) If you want to see just about every detail of our Thanksgiving week, check out all of Jill's pictures on Facebook!

Here are my pictures starting from Thanksgiving. These first several are just kind of a funny progression :)

My family always jokes that when Trent married me he also married Jen!

Trent and I made a chocolate pudding kind of dessert called Lush. This was before we put the final whipped cream layer on. The recipe is from my cousin Michelle (I've put some of her recipes on my blog before).

I don't know who took this picture, but it's cute! Amber, my cousin, Tori, and Aunt Mimi in the background.

The beautiful Thanksgiving spread before we started eating.

Bird's eye view.

After we ate, we played a heated game of PRIZE, a Thanksgiving tradition we adopted from the Harrison's (Michelle's family) :)

After that we all took a walk around the neighborhood and threw the football around a little bit.

This picture cracks me up b/c everyone seems to be going in different directions!

The puppies were so happy :) They love walks!

Friday we did some Black Friday shopping, ate at Johnny Rockets for dinner and went to see the lights at the Mesa temple. While inside the Visitor's Center looking at all of the nativities we ran into Sister Fonbuena! She is a close friend that Trent, Jen, and I met at the Riviera in Provo my freshman year. It was so fun to see her and catch up a little bit! She heads home a few days after Christmas!

That evening us girls and Trent headed back to our place and watched "Step Up" and played Nerts (we played every night before bed!)

Saturday, Jen, Jill, and Bryn had to head back to Provo and Idaho :( The rest of us headed to Las Sendas for some "hiking". It turns out we just walked on a sidewalk most of the time, but it was a fun time! We took two bikes with us and took turns on them..haha.

I noticed this cactus along the way. How did they get that hat up there?!

Amber, my cousin, Paige, and myself.

This was our little bit of hiking! I'm kind of totally blocking Tori in this picture..haha.

After this we introduced the Clark's to Golden Spoon. I got the Pumpkin Pie flavor again! So good!

Sunday we just basically went to church and watched "How to Train Your Dragon" later in the evening. The Clark's headed home on Monday.

We loved seeing everyone during the break and were sad to see them go. Luckily we'll see them in 2 short weeks when we head up to Idaho for Jen's graduation :)

Sweet Tooth

I think my eyes seriously lit up like a child's when Trent walked in after home teaching a bit ago with these babies!

( And we had already each had one before I took this picture :) )

Haha, I have a serious sweet tooth! And I love cupcakes! They are just the perfect little size for me :)

I am 23!

I thought I'd do a quick post on my birthday. It's a little late, but I turned 23 last Wednesday, November 10. I had a wonderful day! Trent took me out to breakfast, instead of the standard dinner, because I had to work from 2-9. It was perfect though because going out to breakfast is one of my favorite things to do :)

We decided to try a place here in Gilbert called The Farmhouse. We had to laugh when we saw on their website that according to United Airlines it's among the top 25 things to do while in Arizona. What does that say about Arizona?? Anyway, we really enjoyed it and I'm sure we'll be back!

Unfortunately I don't have too many pictures from my day. I was teasing Trent that he was supposed to take them and that's why I don't have many.

There were a whole bunch of geese in the pond outside our apartment on our way to breakfast. They've been hanging out around here and it's kind of fun to have them..haha.
When we got back from breakfast I opened Trent's gifts to me and got to spend some time reading all of my Facebook messages and texts :) Thanks all! As I was getting ready to go to work my mom stopped by with some roses :) I didn't get a picture with her b/c I was in my bathrobe, but here's a picture of the roses later in the evening.

Several people told me they were sorry that I had to work from 2-9 on my birthday, but I didn't mind because I got to work with my cute coworker Kelsey! She's so fun, and pregnant :), and I just love chit chatting with her!

Trent usually brings dinner and eats with me in the mall when I'm working the evening shift so he brought fajitas. Oh, they were so tasty :) Later on my mom and Amber showed up with some gifts. I knew they'd do that..haha! I just opened them in the store. Don't worry, there weren't any customers around. It was fun to have them stop by! Again, no pictures :/

I got home around 9:15 and Trent had made me a chocolate cake. We didn't have quite enough candles from after we celebrated his birthday last month, so he just put in as many as we had.

23! haha

Trent sang, I made a wish, and blew out the candles :)

All in all I really did have a great, low key day, just the way I like it :) Wow, this post ended up being longer than I thought it would be!

Too cute!

I'm sure many of you have already seen this, but I just love it! This is Grover on Sesame Street teaching about the word "on" in the format of the Old Spice commercials :)

My favorite part is when the clam chomps on his nose..haha :) Also at the very end when he says, "I am on a horse *MOO* cow!"

Hope it makes you laugh like it made me :)

Blessings Board

Lately Trent and I feel like all we ever do is pay bills, and sometimes we feel like we can't keep up with them. It's hard to go about life without complaining, worrying, and stressing about all that isn't going quite right. Often we (I mean "we" as in everyone) have to make a conscious effort to be optimistic. In reality we are all spoiled and have so much to be grateful for! I know because, for the most part, anyone reading this are family or friends :)

I was thrilled when I happened upon this project several weeks ago, and could not pass it up. And it's so easy to make :) I found the tutorial here.

We found a red frame. Here Trent is spray painting it black.

Here's our final product. We are so pleased with it!

Julie, the woman who came up with the idea, is using her Blessings Board as a Thanksgiving decoration, but Trent wondered why we wouldn't just use ours all year round. We think it'll be fun to change out the fabric for the appropriate season and time of year :) We can't decide if we want to add flowers to ours like Julie did. It would be harder because we'd have to change them up everytime we change the fabric. We may just add some ribbon to a corner because it would be easier. Who knows! My mom thinks we should just leave it plain, but Amber thinks we should definitely add a flower or ribbon ;)
Trent and I took turns writing our blessings with glass markers (I found them at Walmart for about $3.50). It's fun to be able to change them up whenever you think of one! I don't know if you can read them all in the pictures.
They are (I started):

1. Trent
2. Jess
3. Our home
4. The Atonement
5. Our jobs
6. Scriptures
7. Midol (earlier that morning I had terrible, terrible cramps)
8. Pumpkins
9. Cooling weather
10. Date night
We have our Blessings Board right near our front door. As silly as it sounds, it helps keep things in perspective. There's something about having a tangible object that we can look at and write on :)

Hope you guys will think about making one too!