Friends Thanksgiving 2.0

I love my friends. And I love food. And so when Thanksgiving rolls around, combining the two just seems like the right thing to do.
Soooooo this past Sunday, for the second year in a row, we invited our friends to bring a dish to share and we had our own little pre-Thanksgiving feast and enjoyed each other's company.

Tyler invited friends from his mission and I invited my good friends. Obviously I enjoy both groups, so it was a lot of fun to bring those two worlds together to enjoy them all at once and see them enjoying each other. There were good feelings and good food and it left my heart warm. To me it was just a reassurance of what wonderful people our friends are and how blessed we are to have those relationships. I definitely have a lot to be thankful for.

Brett is kinda shy.

 

Side note: I'm really proud of myself for neither burning nor undercooking my first Thanksgiving turkey. I'm no Martha Stewart, but we'll put that one down as a win anyway.

This weekend

A Saturday of studying, paper-writing and wedding-ing.
A Sunday spent corralling 8/9 year olds while trying to teach them about the Word of Wisdom.
Baking 2 loaves of chocolate chip pumpkin bread with neither of them looking good but both of them tasting great.
Practicing and pep-talking for a Monday morning job interview.

And also,
did I mention SHE'S HOME?!?!?!

Thankful Month

Lately I've been feeling ever so grateful. And not just because it's November and Thanksgiving is coming up. I actually forgot it was November until just now. Anyway.

You know, as much as people joke about Provo being boring and so... "Happy Valley," it is really a great place. I appreciate it much more now that I'm not constantly bombarded by the dating culture. But I love living here. I know I am really going to miss it someday when Tyler and I finally get out and about in the world. I love the cute little houses and how close we are to the mountains. I love having all four seasons. I love how many outdoorsy things there are to do. I love that it's a city but it's not a big city with crazy traffic and lots of shoppers like most college towns. I love the restaurants. I mean you gotta admit, it's a pretty good selection.

And you know what else I'm grateful for? The free time I have. Yeah, I'm super busy and nights and weekends with Ty are precious commodities, but I know that we are only going to get busier and we will look back on the simplicity of this season of our lives fondly and even longingly. We have the things we need, we have time to enjoy each other, we are not yet under the stress of paying lots of bills and taking care of children and dealing with real life issues. We're just students and all we have to worry about is getting good grades and making enough money to stay alive. I like that.

I'm grateful we live so close to a temple (soon two temples!). Honestly there are probably 10 temples within an hour drive of me. What a blessing that is that I can drive 5 minutes and attend a session. That is a lot smaller time commitment than it will be if we ever move anywhere outside of Utah where you have to drive two hours just to get to the temple, making it a 6 hour outing. I'm grateful for the convenience of it that I enjoy (for now).

I've just been seeing snapshots into what I hope our future will be, and it's pretty likely that we won't have the things we enjoy here in our little college town. I know it will be wonderful, but I also know that it's wonderful now. Life is good. Life is good.