Our First Thanksgiving (A little late... I know!)

We had a good Thanksgiving this year. It was espically exciting because it was our first one as a married couple. :) This year was my first Thanksgiving away from home. It was a new experience for me, but because of Nick's great family here in Vegas it was a very good Thanksgiving! Nick is used to being away from home for Thanksgiving and so it was not such a big deal for him.

We had a very eventful day as it started by going to Nick's Aunt Vicki and Unlce Keith. Nick got see a lot of cousins that he hasn't seen in quite some time. I also got to meet to each of them and their kids. We had a very delicous lunch of turkey, potatoes, corn, rolls and salad. The kids all exchange their presents on Thanksgiving each year and so we watched them do that. After mingling and munching, we headed onto the next families house that we were invited to. :)

Nick's cousin, Daniel's wife Aurbi, invited us to dinner with her family. Meegan, Aubri's mom, is the sweetest lady ever. She called me ahead of time to give me a food assignment. I had been thinking that I wanted to try to make my mom's chocolate cream pie that she makes every Thanksgiving. I told her I would bring that (if it turned out) and she told me just to send her the recipe so that SHE could make it for ME!! She explained that since it was my first Thanksgiving away from home that she wanted to do something for. I really wanted to learn how to make this pie and so I insisted on doing it myself. Thanks for the sweet notion though Meegan.

Aurbi's family is so sweet and considerate. We had a good time getting to meet everyone and visit with them all. We ate LOTS and LOTS more there too!! :) So we got all sorts of good food and company. We got home around 5 pm that night and since had not gotten any sleep that day, we both went straight to bed and were knocked out until 12 pm that night. :) I guess all that food did it for me! Nick had to work at 1 am and since I didn't have class or work the next day, I joined him at work. Since it was a holiday there weren't many costumers and we were able to watch movies together and snack on goodies all night (I know, really healthy)!! Even though it was a Thanksgiving away from home, it was a good day with LOTS to be THANKFUL FOR!!! :)

The following Saturday we decorated for CHRISTMAS!! I'm extra excited for Christmas this year!! I was telling Nick that I think I took for granted the time I got to spend with my family on holidays, because when you're away from them and not spending the holidays together, you can really tell the difference. I am so grateful that I was able to be with Nick for Thanksgiving and we're even more grateful that we will BOTH be able to spend Christmas with BOTH of our families. Anyways.... We didn't want to spend a lot of money for lights outside because we will be moving into an apartment soon and won't need outside lights for some time. So we went through the Christmas stuff in the garage. :) I usually only like to use one solid colors of lights when decorating anything for Christmas, but the only lights we found in the garage were multi-colored! :) Great huh? Well, we(I mean Nick) put them up anyways!! :) Yes it looks very hott!! :) He did a great job and would be willing to compete with brother BOB anyday!! :)

We also went a picked out a REAL Christmas tree. This was super exciting for me because my mom is allerigic to pine and so we always have a fake tree. The smell this tree is filling our house with is WONDERFUL!! :) Sorry that you're allerigc mom!! :( We picked the most beautiful tree ever! :) For a real tree is sure does look fake because its SOO full. We figured that since we will buy a tree every year, that it would be worth our money to buy clear lights and some things to decorate the tree with. :) We got some great things at Michaels and Nick picked out our stockings!! I think he did a pretty good job!! :) Decorating our first Christmas tree was kind of a big deal because Nick says that our FIRST tree topper has to be our tree topper FOREVER!! So as you can see the main theme for the tree was important. The results turned out pretty cute! As you can see we don't have ornaments yet, and so I picked things that would still make our tree pretty and not bare. What do you think? We also made the "Tree Juice" and poured it in. This was also a new experience for me because of having fake trees my whole life. The way we brought the tree home was also a BLAST as people driving by were looking at us like we're CRAZY!! :) Check all the pics out!!

I still have to take pirctures of the lights outside and the stockings that Nick picked out!!