|{ Stockings Hung On The Chimney With Care }|

If you know me at all then you will not be surprised that the day after Thanksgiving we started to decorate our house for CHRISTMAS!! I definitely listen to Christmas music and watch Christmas movies well before that but I try to hold off on decorating to make it a little more special! :)  It's always fun to be in a new place for Christmas because you get to figure where you want everything to go and how to put the lights up outside!

My husband and I both really enjoy decorating for the Holidays! Today we watched 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' and burned a Christmas scented candle while we put up the tree and finished decorating the inside of the house since yesterday we did the outside of the house!! We got done surprisingly quickly and the only thing left to do is find and hang some mistletoe!! Don't worry, we'll warn everyone about the Nargles.  (Geez, can you tell I'm currently reading Harry Potter again?) :)

Here is our house this year!!!

Our hallway

Outside

|{ Anniversary & Thanksgiving }|

So we celebrated our anniversary on Wednesday the 23rd! It was really fun! It kind of felt like we got to have our anniversary twice as both days were filled with extra doses of love and admiration! We watched our wedding video, made sushi, and looked through this years photos to decided which ones we want to put in our album (all of which are yearly traditions)! We also decided that we wanted to start a new tradition since we have a fireplace now! We want to build our first fire on our anniversary! So we did that this year too, which of course consisted of Jon having to cut wood! It was so much fun and oh so toasty warm!!!

Ripping apart a log

The many funny faces of my husband!

Before we started the fire we found these little ash-y pawprints on the hearth, maybe we shouldn't have left the fireplace doors open. :)

Our first fire! See the little bits of green from the newspaper? We decided that bits of Floo Powder must have gotten on the paper. 

It was a really wonderful day and we really enjoyed just spending time with each other!



For Thanksgiving this year we stayed at home and celebrated just the two of us! The only other time we've done that was the year we got married because we were on our honeymoon!! This year we prepared lots of delicious food and tried some fabulous new recipes, among those were a pretty fantastic gravy made by yours truly and an awesome pecan pie made by my talented husband!! We always have a lot of fun cooking together and we definitely enjoyed the holiday!!

|{ All I Need Is Love }|

Today I have been married to my amazing husband for 4 years!!!

I can't even believe it's been 4 years already!! It has gone by so fast and has been the best times of life!!! My husband is everything I could ask for and so so much more!! I feel so lucky to have snatched him up for myself and we still have all of eternity to enjoy being together!!

Today did not really work out with our schedules however.  I had to work today and Jonathan has been studying all day (literally) because he has one of his toughest quizzes this weekend.  Even so, we still made today great.  I surprised Jon with some treats that we remember fondly from our honeymoon and he wrote me the sweetest letter and left it for me to find when I got off of work.  It was all I needed, it was so wonderful!

I am planning on taking pictures sometime soon, I have a little shoot in my head planned out, I just need to find the time to make it happen.

Later tonight we are going to get a pizza and watch our wedding video together! I'm very excited! We are also going to officially celebrate our anniversary on Wednesday and that will be great too!

Oh! And Jon also gave up on Movember.  He hasn't had the time to raise any money so he is just growing a mustache for no reason.  He hated it (and so did I) so he decided to shave it off today!  Here are some photos of him with his 'stache!

|{ Movember }|

I just love November! It is starting to get cold and snow, the Holidays are coming up, Thanksgiving, Christmas music starts up, our anniversary.  It's just a very exciting time of the year and this year it has been even more busy than usual!

Jon is doing his neurology sequence this month, which is apparently one of the most difficult ones so far in both 1st and 2nd year, so he has been very busy studying.  I have been working as much as I can and just got a new job at Applebee's as a waitress.  I officially start training on Wednesday.  I really hope it goes well.  I am still enjoying massage school and this past weekend I learned Thai massage which turned out to be pretty enjoyable.

This month has flown by! I can't even believe that next Sunday is our 4th year anniversary! It just came out of nowhere, and since Jon is going to be so busy studying and taking his neurology test we have not been able to plan much, but I'm sure it will still be great.  4 years...WOW!

I am increasingly anxious to go and see our families in Utah for Christmas.  I keep seeing pictures of my new nephew, Ethan, and I am dying to meet him and cuddle him! We have been planning our Italian dinner too which is going to be amazing!

Also, November is Movember/No shave November (slightly different things).  Jon is participating so he is growing a mustache to help promote and raise money for male cancers.  He looks kinda funny...different anyway...and I am not really enjoying the tickle-y kisses.  I'll post pictures later with his new look! :)

The photos here are from the first day we got snow!! There is no snow in the pictures but it was such a pretty moment that I ended up grabbing my camera to get in some of the pretty scenery around my house.

I hope you all are having a very happy November!!

|{ Welcome To Your Nightmare }|

This year for Halloween we actually did something!! Last year we had nothing to do and it was a bummer of a day.  The only downside to this year is that our house is not visited by trick-or-treaters, sad.  At least we don't have to buy candy.

We dressed up as Dwight and Angela from The Office this year! On Friday night we went to a party with some people from our ward.  It was a blast!!! One of the best parties I have ever been too! We had such a good time.    On Saturday we went to a party with some of Jon's classmates but didn't stay too long (not our kind of scene), it was fun while we were there though!

Then on Halloween itself we got together with some friends from the ward, The Miners, and had dinner (Vindaloo!!) and then carved pumpkins and watched the Halloween episode of Modern Family! It's one of my favorite episodes. Gloria- "Welcome to your nightmare! Ah Ah Ah!" HAHA!!!  It was a really good Halloween! :)

Shalay's, The Miner's, Jon's

The back of Shalay's

Jon definitely got into character as Dwight! 

|{ A Visitor & Rowing}|

My Mommy came out to visit us a few weeks ago!!! She got here right as the leaves were perfect!! It was so colorful! She also got to see Jon play and win his volleyball tournament!! GO CLASS 1 KILLERS!!

We really enjoyed having my Mom here!  She was a huge help for us and it was so much fun to just be able to talk to her and get all caught up! We are very excited to go to Utah for Christmas (thanks to my Papa for buying our plane tickets!), it's going to be a lot of fun!!

While she was here we got to go to a cider mill (one of my favorite things about Autumn in Michigan), we got fragels from Bagel Fragel, we went out to lunch a few times, we made yummy food, we watched a lot of Jon's volleyball games, we watched X-Files, and we went to Bronner's Christmas Store in Frankenmuth! I was so happy to be able to share that with someone from my family!! My Mom loved it!!!

We had such a blast! I'm so happy that she came out to see us!! She's the best!!

We also went rowing a few weeks ago with some friends, it was super fun! We even tricked the guys and put in the anchor without them knowing.  We were trying so hard not to laugh out loud (we were definitely laughing silently since they weren't looking in our direction) while the boys were rowing trying to chase swans and not getting anywhere. "Row harder!" "Why aren't we moving?!" It was hilarious!!

George rowed too hard and fell!

Jon just chillin'

|{ Raspberries: Take II }|

So remember how I told you about the last time we attempted to go raspberry picking and got eaten by insects?

Well we decided that we needed to try again.  We took our friends Katy and Clayton and one of their couple friends (names are eluding me) and went back to the same place to pick some raspberries.  We really wanted to pick some of the yellow and amber raspberries and didn't get a chance last time.

So, armed with clothes that covered us up and mosquito repellent to use if needed, we headed out.  And this time it was lovely!!! We didn't even need the repellent and got to pick all three kinds of berries! It was wonderful and we had a great time!! The yellow ones were pretty much just tart versions of the red, but the amber ones were AMAZING! We decided that the only was to describe them was that were kind of apricot-y! YUM!! I'm glad we gave it another shot.

On another note, I'm really missing the Clark's.  Jon has been super busy with school lately and we haven't really got the chance to hang out with anybody... I can't wait until our Harry Potter marathon when the last movie comes out on DVD! :)