Thanksgiving #1

Here in Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated in October. As an American girl...this is rather odd for me :) I'm used to Thanksgiving weekend in November and all that comes with it...Four day weekend, Black Friday shopping, and the official start of the Christmas season! As a kid we always put our tree up Thanksgiving weekend and I always start listening to my Christmas music.

Well in Canada Thanksgiving is a bit different. Here we have Thanksgiving Monday. We get a three day weekend and its all before Halloween so it can't officially start Christmas...to me it sort of feels like Thanksgiving butt the line in front of Halloween and Halloween is standing there fuming silently.

But at the end of the day this means I get 2 Thanksgivings each year and a girl who loves food like I do can't argue with that being a good deal!

I must admit though, while I spent the whole day cooking up a storm, I also spent it listening to Christmas music! I simply can't cook a Thanksgiving feast without Christmas tunes! The tree however will wait until after US Thanksgiving next month :)

Our Thanksgiving weekend started off with 2 really cool spiritual highs! 1) It was conference weekend! Yay conference! 2) One of our good friends was baptized on Saturday and Phil was able to perform the baptism! Such a wonderful experience and such a wonderful spirit was felt during the baptism and during the program for it.

After the baptism the guys took off for Priesthood session and I got to hang out with Phil's cousin and her kids...we spent the evening watching Harry Potter. Always a good time!

On Sunday Phil and I headed up to the trailer for the last time this year to help close things up for winter and bring back Phil's mom's van. But first, we both woke up with sore throats and headed to the doctor's office...two strep throat diagnosis! UGH! With antibiotics in hand we made the trip to the trailer then headed home for some rest and fingers crossed we'd feel okay the next day for Thanksgiving.

Luckily we woke up this morning feeling much better...gotta love the drugs! I started cooking like a crazy person and spent most of the day in the kitchen. Since we only have one oven this year (last year I was able to use the basement oven as well but this year we have tenants living down there so I was stuck with just our oven upstairs) I decided to take a leap of culinary faith....this year my turkey was cooked in *drum roll* A CROCK POT!

Yes...that's right...a turkey in a crock pot! I was very nervous about this idea but I found a blog post from a lady who said it could be done and gave some good tips. The toughest part was stuffing that turkey into my little crock pot but I somehow managed it. By the time dinner rolled around the meat was falling off the bone! It wasn't the prettiest turkey in the world as it was impossible to take it out in one piece, but it was certainly a tasty one! (Pay no attention to my scary looking husband or the sharp object he's holding...he's just excited to eat turkey!)

In addition to my lovely crock pot turkey I also whipped up apple/cranberry stuffing, cheddar/bacon mashed potatoes, dill new potatoes, sugar glazed carrots, green bean casserole (my FAV!!!), sweet potatoes with mini marshmellows and for dessert I made my mom's amazing holiday stolen bread! She always made it with cherry pie filling, but for Thanksgiving I decided to go with apple pie filling and cranberries with cinnamon and super sweet cream cheese...now picture all this ooey gooey yumminess braided up in a yummy sweet bread and then drizzled with icing! SOOO good! Of course we were all so full after dinner we didn't break into it very fast, but I did sneak a piece after I'd cleaned up the kitchen tonight and it turned out really well. This was the first time I'd made my mom's stolen bread all by myself! Very happy with how it turned out. Definitely going to make the cherry version this year for Christmas!

It was so nice having all 3 of our girls here with us for Thanksgiving. Alishea's friend Holly also joined us and was a big help in the kitchen today! Thanks Holly!!!

Phil's mom and step dad also joined us on their way back from the trailer today. So glad they were able to spend the evening with us!

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian Friends! We are thankful for you all!

Bring On Fall!

Our family spent the weekend at the pumpkin patch and decorating the front yard for Halloween! It was so much fun. We got our pumpkins picked out, got some awesome corn on the cob for dinner and treated ourselves to candy apples. So yummy! We also played on the farm's super slide :)








While we were out we picked up some decorations for the yard and got it all set for Halloween...





Later this month we're hosting our second annual Halloween party and I'm super excited about it! The girls picked out costumes this weekend. Chloe is going to be a pink devil and Abrianna will be a black cat. As for Phil and I....still undecided. :)

Next weekend is Canandian Thanksgiving...can't get used to that! Thanksgiving before Halloween? Totally throws me off! But it's fun getting 2 Thanksgiving's year!

Happy Fall Everyone! Hope you're all enjoying it as much as we are!

House Guest

My brothers dog, Sunny, is staying with us for about a month while he and his family are away for work/vacation. She is a very sweet dog...making me wish we had one.

2 Fabulous Years!

Today is our 2nd anniversary! 2 years ago we were sealed for time and all eternity in the Toronto Temple.



It's been a wonderful 2 years and we're looking forward to many many more!

To celebrate, Phil and I spent the weekend together. We started with a stop at the temple. We were dropping off Abrianna and some other girls for the Beehive Conference and thought it would be fun to visit the temple Sat morning....that is until we realized our recommends just expired! Oops! Turned out the temple is closed for a few weeks anyway so it wouldn't have mattered. We ended up just taking a walk around the grounds and got a new picture in the spot we got "officially" engaged:





After the temple we spent the day window shopping, having lunch together and checking into a hotel for the night. We stayed at the Don Valley Hotel and it was a nice little escape from the everyday. Nothing too fancy but wonderful to be away from home.

I neglected to take photos of the hotel so here's a couple I found online. This was the room style we had and we loved the indoor pool!



We had a great view of the outdoor pool from our room but it was a bit too chilly to go out and enjoy it. We stuck to the indoor pool and hot tub!

View from our window:


Sunday morning after a delicious buffet breakfast we took advantage of the balcony and sat outside enjoying the beautiful fall weather.



Phil makes an excellent foot rest :)


After checking out of the hotel Phil took me for a quick stop at this huge house/mansion that he used to attend art classes at when he was a kid. The grounds are covered in beautiful gardens and we took a walk through them.



As we were leaving we heard some tinkling music...Ice cream truck!




Fun weekend together :) I love my Phil so much! So glad we chose to be together forever!
Xoxoxoxoxox

Salmon

Last week for Family Home Evening we took the girls down to Bowmanville Crek to check out the many salmon making their way up stream. This event happens every year and is special to me because it happens right around our anniversary. The first time I saw the salmon was during a nature walk Phil took me on during our honeymoon week together. It was fun to do this with the girls and see all those fish :)

Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Life

After the busy, fun and slightly chaotic hiatus of Summer, we're now back to our normal routine. Kids are back in school and home from the trailer so we're back on our schedule of having them with us every other weekend and Tuesday nights. It was a nice normal weekend and I liked it that way. Friday and Saturday Phil got to work painting our living room. It's only partially complete but well on its way. I'm so thankful he is working so hard in his off time to help improve our home. Every step we complete gets us one step closer to what we want our home to be. The girls and I did some grocery shopping and grabbed a hot chocolate together in celebration of the beautiful cool fall weather we got this weekend! It was wonderful. I even broke out my long jeans and cute boots! I'm so happy to be saying farewell to the vicious heat of Summer. I love Fall most of all and hope it sticks around awhile!

That night we decided to head out for a family walk to enjoy the weather. Nice relaxing family fun! We rounded off the awesome day by ordering Chinese and having a movie night. I love my family!

Today was church. Phil was released from one of his callings which is nice since we've both had multiple callings in our ward for the past little while. Our ward just recently merged with some members from another ward and it's nice to have some new faces to share the work with :)

This afternoon we made time for another family movie together, sorted through all he kids clothes and downsized a bit, then had a visit with our friends Dawn and Immanuel and their family.

Simple, normal weekend...and I loved every minute of it!

Good Luck Girls!

Good luck to our girls heading back to school today! Hope it's an awesome year! We love you! Xoxoxoxoxoxoxox