There is something about squeezing 14 people and 1 dog into my parents living room to open presents and spend quality time with one another at 6:30am on Christmas morning. Pajama pants and coffee breathe are totally acceptable. Some of the photos are blurry but as stated earlier, it was 6:30am!!Pajama pants and coffee breathe are totally acceptable. Some of the photos are blurry but as stated earlier, it was 6:30am!!

Oops! I haven't blogged since Thanksgiving. Isn't is crazy how the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is over in a blink of an eye. As I think back, I can't think of anything I did in those two months except buy presents, wrap presents, send Christmas cards, etc...

I will say that one of my favorite things about living away from my family is, "going home" for Christmas. There is something about traveling home for the Holidays that makes me feel warm and cozy inside. I think knowing that you'll see everyone and they'll all be in a good mood and full of cheer makes the trip priceless.

The following pictures are from Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve traditions include: church, dinner and dice game.

My Mom, Step-dad, Grandpa and brothers came to visit for Thanksgiving. It was fun to be able to host Thanksgiving in our new home. I thought for sure I would have some sort of kitchen disaster while cooking a big meal but we had a disaster free Thanksgiving (mostly due to the fact that my mom was there to coach me along). Everything turned out so great and it was a lot of fun to spend time together.

We officially hosted a drum circle at our house for our young marrieds group. It was sooo much fun. Our friend, Neysa from church teaches/facilitates drum circles and she so kindly brought her drums and other instruments over for a night of fun. I really don't have any rhythm but it was sure fun to pretend!



I know that I never posted more photos of the house but it's just not that exciting to post photos of empty rooms. These pictures were taken in our basement (the home theatre/bar area). The white wall serves as our tv screen until we get a real one. The image just about fills the whole wall so it's like our own little movie theatre.

As most of you probably know, we had a big snowstorm last week. It was fun being stuck inside, playing Scrabble and drinking hot chocolate. The nice thing about Colorado is that a day after the storm, the sun was shining and jackets were no longer needed. All the snow that fell around my house (see below) is now melted.





On Halloween, I was really excited to hand out candy and to be super festive, Joe got a Jack O' lantern pizza from Papa Murpheys ( even though he had to wait in the worlds longest pizza line). Unfortunately, we had to turn off the lights at 7:30 because we ran out of candy. Who knew that we would have over 100 trick or treaters!! My grandma kept a tally as I answered the door. : )





To finish up Halloween night, Joe took out my stitches! Here is a picture of him in action.

My grandma is visiting for the week so I took her to the Denver Botanic Gardens yesterday. Good thing we went yesterday because today the ground is covered in inches of snow! The gardens were absolutely beautiful but will be even more fabulous in the summer!

Joe and I joined some of our friends from church to celebrate our friend, Rachel's birthday at a corn maze. We broke into 3 teams to see who could find all of the check points first. Our team won but let's just say I had nothing to do with that win. For some reason I have no sense of direction, I really just followed the group around and was nothing more than an extra body. For those of you that don't know I got a B in a hiking course when I was in New Zealand and I think my instructor gave me a B to be nice! I don't know that I care to do another corn maze in my life but it felt very festive and fall like so that part was great!