Thanksgiving 2013

I knew I'd eventually get around to it... and it will be so much easier with my nice new computer. What a lifesaver! So Thanksgiving was a pretty relaxing day for us. We didn't have much planned since Scott's parent's were in St. George. All that week I had been pretty good running. One day I walked because it was windy and I knew Scott would be home late so I walked most of the uphill pushing the kids in the stroller with a south wind coming at me. I was able to run home decently. But come Thanksgiving morning I wanted to push myself to a new level. I think the max I had ever ran at once was 3.5. Half of that being at a nice incline thanks to our lovely lake bed of a valley. So that alone seemed pretty intense. I decided to tack another mile onto that. 520 E (aka Seventh street in most of Tooele)  runs north and south in Tooele and basically covers a good chunk of Tooele on the east side from about almost 1500 N to Skyline Drive (which is about 500 S). It is the main street that turns into our neighborhood. The street doesn't go all the way through for cars but there is access through the park across from our neighborhood. So It's nice since we're almost 1300 N for me to just head south on that road and I can connect to almost anything from there. To make it 4.5 miles I went to Vine St (city center basically so 0... I love that I understand coordinates now. How did I ever live without them?) and jogged over to a Droubay (a main road that runs the length of the east side of the Tooele Valley from Tooele to Erda) then took that down to this street that is kind of the other half of our development area and can bring me back around to our home. I always have a rough first 5 min where I'm trying to get my breath steady and once I get that I'm good to go. Then when I was in a good groove Seventh Street got steeper. The muscles in my feet and calves were burning and I was dying. I had to walk a couple times but I'd only let myself do it for a minute and I had to run at least two minutes in between before stopping. Then I really pushed myself once on Vine as I headed over to Droubay. Once I get to Droubay it is sweet relief! All downhill from there! It felt so good too. It was a great way to start my morning. Scott was able to go play bball that morning. Our ward is unlike most other wards that do football (another reason this ward was made for us) Thanksgiving morning. Scott does like playing football but all the boys play bball that morning so Scott went to play and had some fun.

I was making yummy rolls for dinner and just bought some crescent rolls too. I also decided I really wanted to make virgin sangria. So yummy. I love it. So I did that too. We spent the afternoon at my parents and I made sure not to overly stuff myself like I have done so many years past. My metabolism is just not what it used to be. I am pretty proud that I have been able to maintain the same weight throughout the holidays. I have lost 10 lbs and kept it off. This is the longest I think I've been able to do it. Next step is dropping some more. Baby steps... all baby steps. Back to Thanksgiving though. We pretty much just hung out and did the usual. Spent a little time with the animals. I love being with the chickens and ducks and horses. There is also a group of quail that hang out now because my mom has been putting out food for them. They're so cute! It was a nice day though. I didn't take many pictures because I just forget. Here's what I have:

The tail end of the virgin sangria.

 The famous Christensen yummy rolls. It is not Thanksgiving if we don't have these rolls. They were always a tradition from my dad's side of the family. They don't make the same refrigerator biscuits so we have to use the huge ones which messes with cooking times and the gooeyness of them. They used to be a lot smaller. Some time I will fix that. I've thought about trying it like monkey bread. More like a pull apart. Should test that sometime.

This was our Thankful wreath. I didn't want to spend money on a styrofoam wrath like I should have so I took this woven one I bought at DI a long time ago and tied some fall colored cloth on it to cover it so I could stick pins in it. Then because we had the most gorgeous fall I had ever seen in UT I took leaves from our tree out front and protected them with contact paper and cut them out so each of us could write something we were thankful for each day and pin it to it. Our tree was amazing this year. All at once we had green leaves then they would turn a bright red then fade to orange to a golden color then yellow then brown. Our neighborhood is full of these trees and they all looked amazing so I wanted to capture the colors. Sadly some just turns brown and didn't preserve the way I had hoped but that's okay. Here is our lists below. We may have duplicated answers. These were harder to see because you had to layer as opposed to our thankful tree from last year (seen below).

Nevertheless... here is our lists:

Audrey:

family vacations, family history tools, lotion, our kids, our Roku, calling in YW, health insurance, our car, our freezer, temples, good health, heat and a/c, modern day revelation, sleep, callings, clothing, visiting and home teaching, Heavenly Father who loves us, washer and dryer, myself... I mean... dishwasher (haha!), winter clothing, all of our furniture we've received over the years from family, modern medicine, hand me downs from awesome neighbors, my bike, and the couch and chair we got from Scott's brother. 

Scott:

technology, sealing power, a fixed car! (That glorious day his car ran again! More on that in another post), hygiene products (some people he works with aren't as aware of these so Scott appreciates our clean family :) ), our awesome shower head (a very sweet buy at Costco when we first got the house and has made showering that much more wonderful every day :) ), electricity, cell phones, law enforcement, being able to run and exercise, technology (... always and forever...Napoleon Dynamite if you don't remember), imagination (Charlotte constantly entertains us with hers!), his job, water (for drinking), running water (for bathing, toilets, etc...), deoderant (must have been another smelly day at work), our mattress (it was his parents but is so much better than our old one... we love it!), our home, cell phones (again... oops!), doctors, prophet, internet, beds for us all to sleep in, music, weather, fridge, and the safety of our home. 

Charlotte (and Jackson I guess... he's just not quite old enough to participate yet):

food, moms, lights, people that love me, my family, balls (we have a basket of basketballs, volleyballs and other random ones. She looks around the room a lot as she does this), toys, our bodies, lights (oops again!), zoo, eating, primary teachers, buses, tents, bees and butterflies, grandmas and grandpas, remotes, dogs, the new aquarium (still not open as of yet but soon!), bubbles, going to the zoo (she misses it, we haven't been since our pass expired), Toby, animals, playing with Jackson, angry birds, and going to her grandma's houses. 

We have so many things to be thankful for this year. It's been a long rough year but we have been blessed in so many ways. As of thanksgiving we had no idea what the Christmas season would bring which was a whole lot of love from everyone around us. I'll get into that in another post. But I am so thankful for just life in general. We are so blessed with all we have and I wouldn't trade my life for anything. So incredibly grateful this year!