New couch, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations

We have been looking for a new coffee table for a while and we went into a local furniture store called the Potato Barn to take a look.  We came out with a couch. What!  Ya, we impulse buy.  We have hated our couch for many moons for multiple reasons.  We saw this one and fell in love immediately.

And its super comfy.

And now for Thanksgiving

We had a nice thanksgiving with just Andrew and I.  It was so relaxing.  I made ham, homemade stuffing, homemade rolls, grandma's rasleberry pie, fruit salad, asparagus and of course the staple mashed potatoes and gravy.

 I have a problem for cooking for just two people, but we had amazing leftovers for a week! YUM!
Notice the Indians at the table-they are our only Thanksgiving deocrations.

My cute hubby with his plate loaded

The after math, wishing he hadn't eaten so much.

 Here is my very first homemade pie.  The W of course for Ward.  I made the crust from scratch and it was more difficult than I thought it would be.  I had to do it twice per a small minute mistake on the first batch.  Pie crust dough is very finicky. But I prevailed and here is the beautiful result.  I have to thank my wonderful grandma Kofford for the recipe. She is one of the best cooks I know.  She makes everything from scratch and it is always amazing. And this pie, AMAZING.

Andrew and I have had the week of Thanksgiving off and we have taken the time to do a lot of Christmas decoration shopping.  You see, we love Christmas. A lot.  We already have a significant number of decorations but you can never have enough.  We spent the day after thanksgiving putting up all our decorations and finding our real Christmas tree.

 I couldn't resist the fat Santa or the owl(quite possibly best decoration ever)

 Here is the wonderfully smelling Christmas tree we picked out this year after MUCH(on Andrew's part) of deliberation and driving around.  Picking a tree is an art form you see.  Andrew is master.
Side note: While I was sitting on the couch at about 3 am(I work graves, don't judge my messed up sleep schedule)  I looked over to see the tree crashing to the ground breaking many of these ornaments.  Sad.  I then had to call to Andrew to help me get it back up and redecorate and clean up all the glass pieces at 3am. 

 Andrew loves to put lights on the house. We chose colored lights this year because they just make me happy.  He got to use his new Little Giant ladder to put these up, highlight of his week.

 I just threw this in there because we were taking a nap on the couch and it was so perfect I had to take a picture.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Good Friends

Because we all know I am a huge slacker-I am just now writing about our good friends who came to visit us in October. Ahem. We have missed living with the Skousens and as fate would have it, Geoff had to come to Arizona for an interview so we got to spend the week with them.  It happened to be a really hot week in Arizona(weird right...) so all our outdoor activities were limited.  I am so sad but we really only got one good picture of me and Alisha and it was at the swimming pool.

 Alisha and I were back row nursing buddies with a similar sense of humor. Ever since then we have been best friends.  Alisha is all sorts of Martha-e and because I need my hand held, she and I do fun projects together.  She taught me how to can food, blog, cook delicious food, take pictures, do crafty things and now she has got me(and Andrew) hooked on pinterest(shaking fist) We always have such a good time together!

 We took a little outing to papa-go park but it was 100 degrees so we didn't stay long but Henry had a blast as always.

 We tried our hand at making caramel apples

 It started out good.....

And this is what came out....don't laugh. They weren't our best work.  And they were rock hard. 

But we ate them anyway!

Alisha is an amazing photographer. As such I have stolen all of these pictures from her.  But she also offered to take me and Andrew's pictures.  Turns out, me and Andrew had some misunderstandings about the pictures and so by the time he got there it was almost dark. But, being the amazing photographer she is, she still managed to get some good pics.

 

We are so glad they came to visit and hope they come again.  It was so fun to have them around like old times-sniff sniff.

Halloween!

 In case you can't tell, I'm Olive Oyl and am cheating on Popeye with Indiana Jones

(He's so much hotter)

Henry wanted to be in the picture too but turned away at the last minute. He has to be a part of everything.

Andrew kept changing his mind on what he was going to be and put his awesome costume together in the last 2 hours before the party. We went to an ER work party with a bunch of drunk people-always entertaining.

And I made these homemade doughnuts-first time and they were amazing.  Alicia was my inspiration as she made these for me last year. Apple cider doughnuts-delicious.

Seaworld

Seaworld rocks!  We had so much fun there.  We went to all the shows and spent all day there.  I am so amazed by all the animals and the shows they put on.  The killer whales were so cool.  They would go around the pool and splash people with their tails and everyone in the first 15 rows got soaked.  And I mean soaked. 

Ok, seriously how cool are these guys.

They would swim up on to this platform and use their tales to spin themselves around a few times and "break dance"

So cool right, the show was amazing and thoroughly kept me entertained the whole time.  They were jumping and splashing and interacting with the trainers.  It was so amazing.

Then they had a big "Shamu Rocks" finali at the end of the night with all 4 killer whales.  And that was even cooler

 I loved the lighting, it made for some awesome pictures

 They are waving at the crowd.  Notice the bleachers behind them are totally empty because we had all been to the earlier show and got wet and it was a little nippy outside now. Everyone sat a little farther away this time.

See the top of the tail.  This is about 2 seconds before getting splashed. The whales would swim around the edge of the pool and use their tales to splash people.

And now on to the dolphins...

 Um, what kid/adult wouldn't want to be a dolphin trainer after watching this?

 I mean, riding dolphins. Soooo jealous

I price-lined a hotel the night before we left and we got a great hotel with an awesome view

Later that night we went out to the gaslamp district for some dinner and treats.  After walking around for about an hour we(the two most indecisive people ever) finally decided on this burger place. There, I had the best burger I have ever had in my life-it was called the stinky burger.  I had this blue cheese sauce on it that was to die for.  And for dessert we went here....

and ate this...

and it was as good as it looks.

The whole quick trip.

You stay classy San Diego

Andrew had Friday off a week ago so we took advantage and took a short drive over to San Diego.  We drove straight to the zoo for some animal fun.

Ok really, can you get any more cute than this? I don't think so.

 And don't forget the Elephants! I love them-so very much.  Seriously, ever since I visited them in Africa I think they are the coolest. Ever.

And when you get tired, you can lay your head down on your own butt. 

But our favorites of the zoo, were the monkeys and the orangutans. They were hilarious!

 It first started with the monkey's.  This little baby hit it's mom in the head and then ran away.  When she tried to escape, he chased after her and wouldn't leave her alone.

 The burlap sac

I don't know why but all the orangutans wanted this burlap sac, but they did

 They would steal it from each other- one monkey in particular was so fun to watch.  He just harassed the other animals. Swinging on the ropes and rolling in the grass.  I seriously could have watched him all day.  I tried to get some video of it but it just doesn't do him justice.

If you have ever been to the San Diego zoo, it's enormous.  And it's on a big hill.  So to get back up the hill, you ride the moving walkways! Genius!

  

We got to the zoo a little late so we only had a few hours.  We practically ran through it but managed to see almost everything.  The weather was perfect and we had a blast.  I highly recommend to those of you who haven't been.