Giving Thanks

Things are in full swing Christmas here at the Creers as we are excited to celebrate Christmas #1 in just about 2 weeks before flying home for the holidays. But I can't forget writing a post about Thanksgiving!

The Jack family (my mom, dad, Ginelle, Spencer, and Evan) got here Wednesday afternoon. We surprised Evan by picking up The Limited Edition of Zelda Skyward Sword for Wii and he was so excited. He had been looking for it at every place in Utah County, but as he didn't reserve it, everyone had sold out. So I did a little calling at the local Targets at was able to reserve it at the Cascade Station location. We made a little boy very happy by having it ready for him to play as soon as he got here, and that's exactly what the boys did while the girls were working away in the kitchen making pies and rolls. We had some yummy pumpkin pancakes for dinner and then spent the night swimming at the hotel pool and hot tub.

Thursday was turkey day! We enjoyed sleeping in and then relaxing all morning. We headed up to Battle Ground for Thanksgiving dinner and festivities with my Uncle Art, Aunt Sheri, and their 3 boys (the Gaileys). Sheri brined the turkey and it was AWESOME. So moist and tasty. In fact, if you go to allrecipes.com and search for "turkey brine," hers is the first recipe to come up. We stuffed ourselves silly and then relaxed/watched football/chatted. We watched the movie (from the BBC? You can find it on Netflix) The Nativity and it was so funny. It's a British movie about a church school putting on a Nativity play. Just watch it. We finished the night with pie, pie, and more pie! And then a food coma. :)

Friday we did NOT go black friday early morning shopping. Instead, we slept in to our hearts content. We headed up to Cascade Station and hit up some lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings, then got lost in Ikea. I love that store. I love playing house in all the different set ups. We also scoped out Sports Authority for Dustin to pick out some Christmas presents from my parents, and then explored HomeGoods, which was cool! Utah doesn't have that store and they had a lot of good stuff. Good thing I contained myself and didn't buy anything. Cuz we don't have any money. :( After our adventures at Cascade Station, we made our way north to Vancouver and stopped at Old Navy for some Holiday shopping. We met up with my aunt, uncle, and cousins for dinner at the House of Beijing. I was expecting a restaurant similar to PF Changs based on the awesome reviews my aunt gave it. It was a totally dive. Looked so ghetto. But the food was awesome. I'm still craving the crab puffs right now. We will definitely be going back! We then headed up to Battle Ground for game night. The adults played Frustration and I am so happy to say that I WON! And Dustin came in second! It was a good game with victory for the Creers! To top the night off, we all headed down to Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland for a midnight doughnut run. I have seriously been waiting for weeks for this. I kept wanting to go to Voodoo Doughnuts but kept telling myself that when my family came, we would go. And it was worth the wait. Now I know that Voodoo Doughnuts has a lot of hype and I do have to say that they are not always amazing. They have some doughnuts that are to die for such as the Voodoo doll (chocolate bar doughnut with raspberry filling), Mango Tango (Mango jelly filled doughnut with vanilla frosting and tang sprinkled on top. SOOO good), I've heard the apple fritters are fantastic but haven't tried one yet, and the bavarian cremes. BUT, all their other doughnuts are just kinda so so. There, I said it. But for those excellent selections, they are freaking awesome.

Saturday we didn't sleep in quite as long, but we started the morning with early morning bowling at Big Al's in Vancouver with the Gaileys. After bowling we went to 5 Guys for lunch and then to Sheridan's for frozen custard. (can you tell how much my family likes to eat?!? Kinda the highlight of every trip....) Dustin and I shared a Candy Cane pothole (vanilla custard mixed with crushed candy cane and chocolate shavings with a hot fudge pool in the middle) and it was SO good! My aunt had to leave for work so we headed back to Big Al's for some arcades, and then to Trader Joes. My mom picked up some snacks for their drive home and they all looked so good! Eggnog flavored chocolate covered almonds! Seriously genius. I'm going to have to go pick some up for myself. Saturday night we were SO full from all the previous eating that day that we just kinda chilled at my house, watched Elf to kick off the Christmas season, and ended with Thanksgiving leftovers and pie.

My family left Sunday morning for their long drive back and while it was sad to say goodbye, we are excited that we will be seeing them again soon in Utah! It was such a great Thanksgiving holiday and we are so grateful that my family was able to come out and visit us. Dustin and I are so blessed with everything that we have in our lives! Sometimes we get frustrated thinking about the things we don't have, but we do have so much and are thankful for it every day!

For the Love of Groupon

Groupon has to be one of the greatest creations. I know they don't always have the greatest deals, but they have been awesome lately, allowing for the perfect dates as we explore our new state!

A couple weeks ago we used a Groupon to go to the Portland zoo. It was fun because they had started to put up all the lights for Christmas time. It wasn't a big zoo, so we were able to see EVERYTHING. Here are a couple pictures of trip:

Last weekend we used a Groupon to go bowling with our friends the Stanfords. The groupon was $25 for up to 6 people bowling for 2 hours, including shoe rental, $10 to the snack bar, and $5 of arcade tokens. Split between the two couples, it was a cheap and way fun date night! With 2 whole hours of bowling, we almost fit in 4 games. Our last game we knew didn't have much time left, so we had to hurry. We did "lightening" bowling where one person would bowl right after the other, to hurry and get as many frames in as we could. We were bowling so fast that the computer couldn't keep up with us and our scores got all jumbled. Which was really too bad, because we were all bowling our best game ever! Everyone got strikes or spares almost every single frame. It was awesome.

This weekend (today!), we are going to the coast and staying in Seaside with a groupon deal I bought before we left Utah. We got a stellar deal for a one night stay at a hotel in Seaside, a welcome package with flowers, wine (oh boy!), and chocolate, and $25 to a restaurant for dinner. We leave this afternoon and are so excited for a little getaway. Dustin has never been to Seaside so it will be fun to go explore with him! Especially cuz he's had a bunch of tests this week and needs a break!

Thank you Groupon for allowing us fun dates for cheap!

Just a little note

Do you ever feel like you have SO much to blog about that you just don't blog at all? Cuz it's hard to spit it all out in typing and you don't know where to start?

That's how I've been feeling. Or else you would have had a post a day. My apologies for not posting much at all. I'll try to spit it all out. We've just been having fun instead.... and I go on these blogging feasts it seems where I'll just get 5 posts in one day. Maybe if more people would comment to let me know someone actually reads this stuff....

Plus, I've also been trying to get everything ready for next week because it's Thanksgiving!! And my family will be here! And I am very excited about that :) So the house needs to be perfect.

So, for now, I leave you with a short post including a few pictures of happiness.

Photo 1: The tree outside our bedroom window. Man, I love fall. And I love opening up my window to see this. None of the other trees in our courtyard look as pretty as this.

Photo 2: Look at this adorable turkey! I don't think you can get much cuter than this as far as turkeys go. I wish I could claim that I made this, but I didn't. Thank you Quilted Bear.

Stay tuned for more posts coming [hopefully] this afternoon!

Fall Fiesta

You know how Halloween was like AGES ago (at least it feels that way). Well, I'm finally blogging about it. Seeing as how all the young couples in our ward have 3-5 children, that meant that they would all be trick or treating or handing out candy to trick or treaters. So we kept it chill and just had a yummy broccoli and cheese soup dinner with some candy corn shaped cheesecake. To clarify, no, it was not candy corn flavored, it just looked like a cute candy corn!

We then watched Season of the Witch, featuring Nicolas Cage, and it was okay. Scary enough for us without giving nightmares.

A week ago we got to be a part of an Albertsons store closing featuring most every item at 75% off!! It was a MAD HOUSE. My incredible husband stood in line for 5 HOURS to get our food. I would have been with him there the whole time, but after being in line for and hour and a half, a friend picked me up to go to our Relief Society activity. And while I was there, I remembered that the store was closing at 7 and that I wouldn't be able to get back in line with him :( So he had to be in line by himself for 3 & 1/2 hours. Of course, by that time, everyone in line made great friends with each other since they knew they were going to be there for a while. We felt like extreme couponers as the total went from $240 to $59! 75% off is awesome! But I don't think we'd ever want to do that again.

We are excited for Thanksgiving in two weeks and for my family to come up and visit us! I keep wanting to go to Voodoo Doughnuts but am holding out til they get here.

Fall up here is so pretty and the colors have been changing a lot lately! I can't believe Utah has had 3 snow storms already. It's been sunny skies in the 50's.

Anybody wanna come visit? We have a spare room just waiting for company!

My Good Life

You know how most times, people just post about how completely wonderful their life is and how nothing is wrong, like ever? And you know that it's never all that they say that it is?

Well, my life is really all that. All that and a fresh baked cookie!

Okay, maybe not that awesome.

But, i am super happy.

I'm enjoying my time at home.

I'm enjoying helping out another family with their 5 kids.

I'm enjoying living within a budget.

I'm enjoying cooking most every night and trying new recipes (especially when they turn out awesome!)

I enjoy cleaning my house.

I enjoy reading my scriptures for a good half hour every day. Followed by a Conference Talk.

I enjoy exercising in the gym or with Bob Harper on the Wii's Biggest Loser game.

I am really happy.

Okay, okay, so not everything is fairy tale perfect. I would love to be able to buy things just for the fun of it.... To see something in a store and pick it up for Dustin just because. But now I have to constantly think, "is that in the budget?" Usually it's not. We used to be able to buy whatever we wanted. But I don't really miss it. I like not splurging on every little thing. I feel like I have a lot more self discipline. And staying in our budget will keep us self reliant. Which i love.

I also would still like a baby. I haven't started back on any clomid or have gone to see a doctor out here. We have zero insurance, but we do have money in our HSA still.... Not to sound selfish, but I am enjoying this time to myself and with Dustin. Just the two of us. Maybe it was that we were in my parent's house for a year, maybe it's that we're in a new area and I'm still adjusting to the changes... But I'm okay that we're not having a baby right now. We're not giving up on it, we're just not aggressively working on it with medication. The de-stressing, exercising, enjoying life can only help my body.

So yeah, not everything is perfect. But I am SO Happy. Have I said that enough yet? I have a good life. So good that I can blog this while watching The Price is Right. PS They tried to give away a freaking nice BMW today on The Golden Road. The chick lost. Too bad.

Yeah, I have a pretty good life.