Carrie's Wedding

We planned to celebrate with Carrie (Kenny's cousin) and Michael at a dinner with them to celebrate an upcoming wedding. However, they were able to get their wedding arranged so we did that all the day after Thanksgiving. It was such a great wedding!
It was sooo cold out that day. They were so nice and only had a few group pictures. We all ran back to our cars to get warm!
And all the Woodson's that were there.
And Kenny and I :)
The wedding was so beautiful! At the reception they had a Christmas tree set up and they put ornaments on it. Then they had each of us take an ornament home. That was so fun!
This morning we woke up to a lot of snow!
Belinda stayed over last night and needed to leave today. We took her up to the condo a little early so she could catch her flight and we could make it back to church. The roads were mostly wet with a little slush. It was so sad taking her! We wish she'd stay for a long, long time! :)
After church I took down all of our Fall decorations. Here they are! They really don't look like much, but a little bit goes a long way. As Kenny likes to say, it looks like "fall threw up"!
Tonight we went up to Dave and Wendy's and had a nice family dinner. It was snowing all day long. When we drove home I told Kenny I wanted to feel more comfortable driving in the snow...as I hate doing it. So we drove around to an empty, large parking lot and I did lots of doughnuts as well as other maneuvers. I think it helped a little.
Here the Bu is after we romped around. How fun!! I love it, it had no problems in the snow =)

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

We were very excited about this Thanksgiving as we hosted it! (look at me, I am only one day late on this post!!) Kenny planned to smoke the turkey which gives it a very moist flavor as well as a smoky flavor. It always turns out soo good. We had a ton of stuff planned and lots of people to help. It always makes it so fun, although stressful, to have people help. Belinda and Grandma came out from MO to visit us. Belinda came in the night of the infamous blizzard. It was snowing crazy and the wind was out of control. The news informed people to stay home if possible. Kenny and I tried to drive towards the airport to get her. We made it a little ways up Redwood Rd. and had to turn around. You couldn't see the road or shoulder at all. It was really scary. Luckily she was able to land and took a cab to the condo. We met up with her the next day. Tom and Rachel drove down from Rexburg while Brent, Sarah, and the girls drove up from Las Vegas. It's been enjoyable to all be together and we've really enjoyed some relaxing family time.
We hung out all day Wednesday and didn't get home until late that night. We celebrated the night by eating pizza from The Pie...so yummy! I started working on the cheesecake and I had help from Belinda and Rachel who worked on the topping, that was so helpful!
Once the cheesecake was done, it went in the fridge for the night. Kenny woke up around 3am to put the turkeys on the smoker. It was soo cold that night, somewhere in the teens. However, there was no wind so we left the smoker out on the porch. I set my alarm for 6am to check the pellets and turkey. Then by about 930am the turkeys were completely done. Here they are! It was so tempting to eat them right then and there for breakfast!
And here the last two are on the smoker:
Carrie had the best recipe for stuffing, we used sausage and fresh herbs with apples and craisins. It turned out so yummy! Mama B helped out with it.
Because the turkeys were finished so early, Kenny let them 'rest' in the cooler wrapped in foil and newspaper. Even though we ate 4 hours after they were finished, they were still warm!
Rachel made a fabulous carrot dish, such a good little chef! She has been taking culinary classes at school and I enjoy hearing about them.
I tried to get some pictures of everyone as they were here. Dave, Wendy, Carrie, Monika, and Chris came over to help celebrate, it was so fun! We had such a great time.
And more, although some people refuse to look at the camera :)

So glad to be done prepping food!
And here we are reaping the benefits of the meal! It really was just a fabulous meal and everything tasted so good and fresh!
So my cheesecake doesn't look so pretty, but it tasted SO good! I especially like the topping =)
And here we all are... happy and full. What a wonderful family we have!
Thanks everyone for helping with the meal, you all made it so wonderful!

As of late...

A couple of things to catch up on. For Kenny's birthday, I wanted to do something really special for him. He has never been up to a Boise State football game and he absolutely LOVES them. So I decided to buy us tickets to go. I was very late in buying tickets so the only game available was the game against USU. Ironically that is where Kenny is working on his Master's degree. We took a regular trip to Costco and spent too much money, but as always got a lot of good stuff. Then I took him out to Kneaders and gave him his present:) Besides counting in his head how much all of this will cost, I think he really liked it and is excited.
The other day Mariah invited me to go to the Jazz game with her as she had an extra ticket. They were great seats and it was a fun game.
Thanks Mariah! That was a fun game.
Go Jazz!!! They won....of course =)

Our new addition...our Home Theater PC

Kenny has been wanting one of these for sooo long! It just hasn't seemed reasonable to spend money on it, so I kept saying 'not yet'. However, our recent trip to Virginia opened the doors to our spending spree. We went to the outlets and did some damage. So then we went up to the computer geek store and all of the boys bought CPU's for their home theater PC's.

Kenny was so excited! We got back from our trip and all Kenny could think about was building the HTPC. In fact, he could hardly focus on his school work. Once he got it put together he had to install everything on it to make it work 'just so' =)

Such a proud HTPC dad!
Removing the trusty old x-box...she's been good to us! Please don't look at how dusty the area is!
And here she is! Kenny names his computers/electronics after super heroes/street fighter. Let's see, we have Guile for our server, batwing for the computer, batsignal for our router, and now Blanka for our HTPC. That character is from street fighter. Feel free to look him up, he has his own wiki-page =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanka

I guess he is a pretty good Street Fighter character!
Thanks Kenny for putting up with my slow agreement with the HTPC. It's been very cool so far and once we get everything in order, it will be just fabulous! And thanks for being so computer savvy =)

Our Virginia Weekend with Mark and Stacy!!

After 5 years of meaning to visit Stacy and Mark in Virginia, we FINALLY made it! We had such a great time. We flew in late on Wednesday night and the next day we had massages...they felt so good! Then we went down to the beach and walked on the boardwalk and had lunch. It was really fun. It was so nice going to the beach as well, I could have stayed there all day long.

Matt and Mariah drove up from North Carolina to hang out and we all went out for fajitas...they were soo yummy!
Then we went up to Williamsburg and walked around...it was beautiful. And it was fun seeing the quaint town.
And us trying on these lovely hats.

After Williamsburg we went to the Outlets there and did some damage. Then we drove up to Washington...it was a fine drive until we ran into traffic...it was horrendous! We were stuck in it forever and finally decided to get off the freeway, we are so glad we did because we found out later that the freeway went down to one lane...ugh! We got to our hotel really, really late. We got up early to catch the metro...however it was the same day that a huge rally was happening and the metros were completely full of people with long waits. We decided to wait for awhile and went to the store and all of the boys found CPU's for their home theater PC's they're building. Needless to say, they were all excited =)
Matt and Mariah decided to leave after that as they had a long drive home. But we decided to try our luck in driving into D.C. The traffic was fine and we found a parking spot, so we bolted around to see as many sights as we could!
Here's the white house.
Then we went down to the WWII monument, we thought it was pretty cool.
Then we went up to the Lincoln monument, that was really cool.

I liked this pic of the Washington Monument with the flags around it.
And the capitol building.
Once we got back home we got some yummy breakfast at a local restaurant. It was so good! We decided to take the dogs with us because they are so fun!
Later that day we went to tour the aircraft carrier with Mark and Stacy. That was really cool.

These are some of the bunks, however this is the larger bunk areas, others are smaller
We got to go up to the wheelhouse and I became captain...for a moment...
And Kenny, my co-captain
And the wonderful family we hung out with!
Thanks so much for having us and for everything you did for us and all of the time you took out to spend with us! We had such a great time! Can't wait to come back:)