a thankful weekend

It is the end of the week and we are finally starting to wind down. We have had a long weekend with much fun, food, and family! Andrew and I are super blessed to have both our families close by in Utah, so we got to double up on the Thanksgiving dinners this year          (boo-ya)...here are a few photos from our eventful weekend. We kicked it off right and added a few more decorations to our casa to start getting in the festive mood..

Our food assignment for Thanksgiving Dinner was to bring my yummy Oreo Pudding cookies (view my post for these yummies here) I had a blast making them while Andrew primped for the big weekend...

After making cookies (and plucking eyebrows) we spent Wednesday night with some friends seeing Red Dawn and eating Buffalo Wild Wings. The food was awesome, the movie was not. WARNING: If you haven't seen Red Dawn, keep it that way. Awful story line, terrible plot, and an abrupt ending that leaves you feeling empty inside. I am not a harsh movie critic but I will be honest and say that I was extremely disappointed with this one. The good news is we had awesome friends who were with us so we didn't really care that the movie blew. Andrew and I woke up to start our first ever holiday tradition (drumroll please...) the First Annual Christensen Family Turkey Trot! We are training for the St. George half marathon and it took everything we had to wake up and run, but once we were done we were happy we did it and I've vowed to make it an annual tradition. 

As I said earlier, we were able to have two beautiful meals with both our families this year. We spent the first part of the afternoon with our family friends, The Thomas's and had a delicious feast. It was weird not having my dad there, it's still really hard doing anything new that my dad normally did with us. I kept thinking I should tease him about eating too much stuffing or something but he wasn't there and that was tough. My mom was a trooper and helped her friend Mona in cooking like crazy and was much stronger than me on this day. Even though we all missed my dad we had a good time enjoying each other's company and stuffing our faces. The missionaries also joined us for the meal and one of the only pictures I took was of them and I don't even know them, dangit. Oh well.

After the Thomas's house we headed over to Andrew's parents. They hosted quite the feast as well and I was in charge of picture taking for Andrew's mom so I got a lot more pictures at this dinner. Andrew's Aunt, Uncle, cousins, Grandmas, and immediate family were all there and we had a fun time eating and playing for the rest of the day.

I am obsessed with my niece and nephew and have so much fun taking pictures of them. 

I love this picture of Andrew scolding Brutus and Aaden laughing his head off. So cute.

I also had the day after work off and my mom and I did some (not a lot) of black Friday shopping, we watched Josh dominate in his basketball games, and went and saw 'Lincoln' (I cried three times and would highly recommend this one). My sister's friends and I were able to throw her a fun baby shower on Saturday. It was a huge success and was a lot of fun. Andrew and I were also able to put up our Christmas tree (thanks mom) and decorate our little apartment (also more coming on that soon). 

This time of year makes me realize how truly blessed I am to have the amazing people I have in my life. My family and friends are the greatest and I know that's the most important thing and I'm so thankful for them. Overall, super successful weekend! Do you have any ideas of traditions for newlyweds? 

Thanks for stopping by!

xoxo

steph