Thankful

Thanksgiving this year was so much fun! It was also a great opportunity for me to reflect on how blessed I have been, especially this last year. I really am so lucky. Out of the hundreds of things I have to be thankful for, I think I am most thankful for the Gospel and my family. I have the best husband in the world and I'm so glad that I get to be with him forever. We both come from great families too, and we were lucky enough to get to spend Thanksgiving with Michael's sister and her family. They drove down here from Detriot (in horrible traffic!) and spent the weekend with us.

I am not the best cook in the world. I am learning, but cooking Thanksgiving dinner was so intimidating to me. Luckily, Michael decided to be the confident one and offered to be in charge of the turkey. When he asked if he could cook it in maple syrup (ew! and heck no!) I wondered what in the world I was thinking for letting him be in charge of the main dish, but other than the syrup thing, he did a fabulous job! Here's the proof:

Michael's sister and brother-in-law helped guide him through the preparation.....

.... and it ended up great! :-)

As embarrassing as this is to admit, I think I probably did the least amount of cooking out of everyone! Yikes. Even the girls made some delicious dishes! I justify it by saying that it's because everyone was just so helpful that there ended up not being a whole lot left for me to do. :-) Next year, I am conquering that turkey on my own!

Thanks to our tiny table with six people crowded around it, we had to use our coffee table as the food table. Other than having to kneel down to get our food, it worked fine. :-)

We spent the rest of the weekend showing them the sights of Nashville, shopping, seeing the new Harry Potter movie, and hanging out.

Michael and Leah

We tried to make it look like we were holding up the pillars...

I think I moved, which is why it's blurry. Oops.

Downtown

The girls also helped me decorate our little Christmas tree. So much fun! One day, we will have a tree that is not oddly skinny and crooked. :-) Here it is all decorated and pretty:


Thanks Cory, Karen, Natalie, and Leah for coming to see us! It was great to have visitors!

Wedding Pictures!

Happy 3 months to us! And what a wonderful 3 months it has been! :-) Here are a few of my favorite wedding pictures.

Louisville!!!

A few weeks ago Michael asked me if I wanted to go to up to Louisville, KY for a day. His really good friend lives there and since it's only a couple hours away he wanted to go visit the city and catch up with his friend. I had never heard a thing about Louisville so I was in no rush to go, but then Michael told me that his friend had extra tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance show and had invited us to come along! I absolutely love So You Think You Can Dance, so I was beyond excited and couldn't get to Louisville fast enough!

Michael's friend, Ryan, and his girlfriend, Chasity, had a wedding to go to for most of the day before the show but me and Michael still decided to get up early on Saturday and spend the whole day there. Michael wanted to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory and I had done a little research on the 'tourist-y' things to do there so we had a full day planned.

The drive there seemed really quick and the scenery was beautiful!! These pictures don't even do it justice.



As soon as we got there we headed to Thomas Edison's house. We learned a lot there and had fun hearing about all of his inventions.

Michael trying to send me a message in Morse code on the telegraph in Thomas Edison's house.

After this we headed into downtown, found somewhere to park, and went to the Muhammad Ali museum. The museum is huge!! It's also really interactive and fun. I think my favorite part was the boxing ring. :-)

Michael had fun with the punching bag.

So did I! :-)

After exploring downtown a little more, we walked over to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory. The only thing I really knew about Louisville Sluggers was what Carrie Underwood had told me, ("I took a Louisville Slugger to both headlights.....") so I learned a lot at this museum too. I figured that when they told us we would learn how the bats are made, they would let us look into the factory through a glass window. Instead, they took us right into the factory and walked us all over the place. We saw all kinds of cool stuff, including the machine they use to make the perfect bat for each MLB player who wants it. They wouldn't let us take pictures inside the factory because they were worried about undercover spies, but we still got plenty inside the museum!

Babe Ruth's bat!

Me and Babe Ruth

Michael holding Mickey Mantle's bat. I have no idea who that is but Michael thought it was pretty cool!

Outside of the museum

We still had another hour to kill before we met Ryan and Chasity, so we took our time exploring downtown.

We were wondering what was up with all of the horses everywhere and then realized- duh!- the Kentucky Derby!

Then it was finally time for So You Think You Can Dance!!! I was so excited that I could barely sit still! I ended up loving it even more than I thought I would. The dances are even better live than they are on TV. Even the boys enjoyed themselves. :-)

After the show we talked with Ryan and Chasity a little longer and then got in the car and headed back. We were exhausted by the time we got home. We had such a fun trip and hope to be able to go back to Louisville soon!

A Quarter of a Century

We celebrated Michael's 25th birthday yesterday! Unfortunately, I had to work most of the day, but it was still a great day. He spent the day sleeping in, talking to his friends and family, and just relaxing and taking a well-deserved break from any schoolwork. As soon as I got home he opened his presents and then we went out to dinner and a movie. We went to Red Lobster (Michael's birthday tradition) and saw The Social Network. Michael thinks that he is ridiculously old and jokes about how he may as well be wasting away. Ha!





Oh, and as you may have guessed from me having to work most of the day yesterday, I got a job!! Yay!! I do data entry and credentialing for a company called Prime Health Services. It's a managed care company that offers services such as international PPO and repricing offerings. It's about as interesting as it sounds. :-) Still, it's a job! Also, it's super low-key and low-stress, which is a big change from my last job. Michael wants to work part-time and has a few interviews coming up this week, so wish my old-man husband good luck!!

Home Sweet Home

Here are some pictures of our apartment!

The living room

We don't have a real dining room, but luckily we have a spacious living room so the dining table fits nicely.

This is the view looking into the kitchen from the living room/dining area.

The kitchen

The bathroom

Our bedroom is totally pink! Believe it or not, I actually didn't mean for it to be THIS pink. We got a pink lamp and when we turned it on we found out that it tints our room pink! Oops. The pink bedding was the cheapest we could find that was comfortable, and since I love pink, I couldn't complain. After that, we just went with it. Can't say I mind too much, and luckily, Michael doesn't either. :-)

Last but not least, this is our guest room/storage room/Michael's study room. Michael also uses the closet in this room since I pretty much took up all the closet space in our room. He's so nice!

We really like our apartment. Our only complaints are that some of the stuff is really old and doesn't work very well (such as the dishwasher) and there are plenty of spiders. I am beyond terrified of spiders, so that's been quite the adjustment. :-)

We have been having lots of fun and have made some really good friends. We have also been exploring the city. Some of our adventures include walking around downtown, checking out the Titans stadium, and visiting Centennial Park, which is the most famous park in Nashville. It has a replica of the Parthenon which is pretty neat, although we haven't taken the tour of the inside yet.

Wedding pictures are almost done so I will post some when I get them!