Deck the Halls

As promised, the Thanksgiving decorations were taken down the day after Thanksgiving in order to make way for the Christmas decorations. I was excited to get a real tree this year because we have never had one. It smells wonderful and we have invested in several bags of cinnamon scented pine cones so our home definitely smells like Christmas :)

The Front Door

The stockings were hung on the bookshelf with care...

Some of the yummy-smelling pine cones

Kitchen

We gratefully don't have any snow right now, these are the only snowmen in sight :)

My favorite decoration of all! I love that we are able to use some of the decorations from our wedding lunch and reception- it reminds me of that wonderful day that Cody and I spent together four years ago :)

Birthday Boy

Yesterday was Cody's 26th birthday! We spend the morning relaxing and then had french toast for breakfast- Cody's favorite. We then went and bought a Christmas tree and decorated it. For dinner we invited some friends over and had a party. We cooked up salmon, halibut, and clam chowder and had a yummy feast. This year Cody asked for a chocolate cake with strawberry cream cheese filling and ganache on top- I had seen an article about how to make the ganache in a Martha Stewart magazine. The experiment was successful and very rich. 

Blowing out the candles

Inside of the cake with the strawberry cream cheese filling

Cody's favorite present- a new set of pots and pans :)

Texas Thanksgiving

On our way back from our trip to Alaska this summer we were fortunate enough to receive flight vouchers that we put to good use! We decided to take a trip to Houston to visit Cody's sister Mindy, her husband Jon, and their kids Christopher, Ethan, Ryan, and Timothy. The kids had school and Jon had work on Monday and Tuesday so we were able to Christmas shop and play with Ryan and Timothy. On Tuesday we met Ethan and Christopher at their school and had lunch with them. On Wednesday we had a picnic and saw some alligators. I was videotaping our adventure with the alligators and I was standing close to the path while Cody walked down toward the alligators. I was a little tense because a week ago we watched a show on discovery channel where an alligator bit a girl's face and because I am not a fan of reptiles. As Cody got closer to the alligators Timothy came up behind me and latched onto my leg- this scared me and I in turn scared Timothy. Besides that moment, there were thankfully no other scares :) Thursday we watched the annual Turkey Bowl and had a delicious Thanksgiving dinner complete with fried turkey.

Alligator hunters- Christopher, Cody, Ethan, Jon, and Ryan

Alligators!

A caterpillar that Christopher found

Ryan roaring like a tiger- he was so cute! 

The car Ryan, Mindy, and I made

Cody and Ethan hard at work building a treasure chest

We had a blast and are grateful that we were able to visit the Whipples for Thanksgiving!

The Green Thumb

Flag football is a dangerous sport for Cody. I don't think there is a season that Cody has played and not gotten hurt. Two years ago he even had to have knee surgery after an injury while playing flag football. I don't know why I thought this year was going to be any different. Cody and his team of MHA Minnesota Mafia were up against a team that they had already beaten, unfortunately the team decided that they would injure our team in order to beat us. One guy dislocated his shoulder, one took a hard hit that knocked the wind out of him, and Cody thought that he had jammed his thumb while playing. It wasn't until a few days later that we found out that he had actually broken his thumb. The hand specialist decided that he needed a cast because if the bones moved at all they would have to rebrake his thumb and Cody didn't want that. 

Cody chose to have a green cast (his favorite color) hence the 'green thumb'. Cody loves to use my knitting needles to scratch inside his cast. Only three more weeks of an excuse to not do the dishes! :)

Cody and I were married on December 26, 2007. Getting married so close to Christmas meant that we used Christmas colors for our wedding (royal blue and silver). So, all of our Christmas decorations are from our wedding and I love putting them up because they remind me of our wedding day. Cody's favorite holiday happens to be Thanksgiving because his birthday is always close to the holiday (Nov. 26th) and because you get to eat lots of food. Cody has made a rule that there will be no Christmas decorations up until after Thanksgiving. This makes me sad because then we only get to have one month of Christmas/wedding decorations :( The good news is that we didn't have any Thanksgiving decorations so I got to go to the store and buy some. Here they are!

As cute as they are, they will be coming down the day after Thanksgiving!

Kids Say the Darndest Things

Here are two of my favorite stories from this week.

The transitions class visited the U of M a couple of weeks ago and has a few more college visits planned. This week their assignment was to create a brochure of their own college and highlight specific things they are looking for in a college or university. Once they were done with their brochures, they presented them to the class and explained why they chose certain features to highlight. A girl presented her college brochure and told us all about the eating options available on campus. I don't think she understands that there are many different places to buy food because she told us all about the cafeteria that was on campus. My favorite part was when she told us in an excited voice, "You can have 2 milks a day!" Apparently someone doesn't think she is getting enough milk to drink in our cafeteria :)

The special education department is in charge of a talent show in December and we had auditions for the show this week. It was an interesting process- we had some really bad auditions and some really good ones. One of our students signed up to audition and specified that he wanted to be last. The auditions went by quickly and I went to get the student early because we were ready for him. I told him we were ready and he got really nervous and told me that he needed more time. I asked him what he was going to do and he told me he hadn't decided yet. After some talking he decided that since he has a guitar at home that he would play the guitar for us. Unfortunately he didn't have a guitar at school so he suggested that we go borrow one from one of the teachers. I went with him to supervise. As we were walking down the hall I asked him what song he was going to play for us and he told me that he was going to make something up. Come to find out he had never touched a guitar before! We got to the teacher's room and the teacher was kind enough to show him a chord to play and then we were off to audition. His audition had to be one of the longest- over 3 minutes of this kid strumming the guitar and us smiling and acting like we enjoyed it. I invite you all to our talent show, it will definitely be unforgettable! 

It's a Small World After All

While perusing Facebook yesterday, I saw that my cousin Mark had posted a picture from the Mall of America. I commented on the picture and asked if he knew we were living 20 minutes away from the mall. Come to find out, Mark has been in Minnesota for the past month and we didn't know each other were living here. His wife, April, was also in town for the weekend so we decided to meet up and explore St. Paul. 

Our first stop was St. Paul's Cathedral.

April, Mark, and Cody in front of the Cathedral

Inside the cathedral was beautiful. The details were amazing and so intricate. It also scared me a little to think about the people who carved or painted on the ceiling, it was really high. Even though it was beautiful, it didn't have the spirit that we have in our simple chapels. It was nice to attend church on Sunday in our ward and feel the spirit that this church was missing. 

Our next stop was the James J. Hill house built in 1891. James Hill made his money in railroads and used this money to build a 36,000 square foot home for his family of 10 children. The house looked big from the outside, but from the inside it looked even bigger. My favorite parts of the house were the large staircase and the art gallery/organ room. 

James J. Hill Mansion

Beautiful staircase- when they had parties at their house the ladies would arrive in their carriage, walk in a side door, and visit the powder room. Once they were ready to make their grand entrance, they would walk down the stairs and greet the guests on the main floor. 

Organ inside the art gallery

After our tour we went to lunch and then played games and watch the Alabama/LSU game. We're so glad that we were able to connect with Mark and April. We'll have to chastise our parents for not figuring out that we were in the same town!

Murder Mystery

Our friends Natalie and Adam Loris invited us to their home for a Murder Mystery Party. We were gathered together to figure out who killed Al Capone. Cody acted as "Socks Argyle" the golfer and famous deal maker. I went as "Silky" the glamorous club owner. After four rousing rounds of questioning and dinner we finally found out who the murderer was...

Socks in Action

GQ

'Silky'

And the murderer was....ME! Silky killed Al Capone! I may look innocent, but he deserved what was coming to him :)