So Thankful

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with our Lanese side of the family. 

We woke up at 6am and made "Nuts and Bolts" and then left at 7:30am to go to Olympia. We got there around 9am and I was sooooo tired when we left and by 10am I think I was finally starting to feel awake. We had a yummy breakfast all together and had a fun day filled with games, looking at wedding pictures and of course, playing with the babies. I think my favorite part of the day was when the kids went to bed and Megan got to play a game with us and I got to talk with her :) I miss getting seeing her all the time so it was really nice. We all went around and told each other what we were thankful for and it was really nice to just be take the time to let each other know how thankful we all are for our family. Lots of happy tears, I loved it. It was a great family day! Here are some pictures :)

We can't believe how big the kiddos are getting. We had a lot of fun playing with them. Clare is talking so much, Quenton is moving all over the place and Caitlin is just a little doll. Poor girl had a rough day with her teeth and with everything that was going on. She was just so cuddly. 

{Clare at breakfast}

{Clare and Auntie Chelsea}

{Baby Quenton and Uncle Matty, he's such a little cutie!}

{Hehe I love this picture! Quenton's like "Hey Uncle Matty!"}

{"Aw man, not that camera again. I was so nice and happy until you got that thing out"}

{I said, "Quenton, Smiiiile" and, he did!}

{Caitlin working on her standing skills with Uncle Matty}

I hope everyone had as good of Thanksgiving as we did! 

Today was another wonderful day, I'll blog about that now while Matt's watching the Cal game :)

First Turkey & Other News

As promised, here are the photos from our first turkey yesterday. I had so much fun making our first turkey and now feel so confident about it that I told Matt I will be roasting lots of chicken from now on. We had so many great tools that made making the turkey that much easier. One of my dance families bought us a complete turkey making set for our wedding gift {roaster, carving knife, turkey alarms, injector, etc.}

I didn't want to do anything to fancy with my first turkey because I was already so afraid of screwing it up, but I did use the injector! It was awesome. I melted 1/4 cup of butter and poured it into the injector and then injected the butter into 6 different spots in the turkey and watched it plump right before my eyes. So cool! 

The turkey turned out to be so incredibly juicy. I was so proud of myself. Katie said it was so yummy and she never lies so I was super excited :) Matt just enjoyed a left-over turkey sandwich for lunch! 

I gutted out the turkey, did the injections and also rubbed melted butter between the meat and skin with my hand. I added salt and pepper on top as well as poultry seasoning. I baked the turkey at 325 degrees from 2:30-7:00pm basting it every half an hour. (Matt basted from 5-7 while I was hip hopping away). Katie and I came home (to our house) after work and then it was time to eat! YUM!

{12 lb turkey before}

{Mmmm! After.}

{My First Turkey!}

{It was fun having Tuesday Thanksgiving with Katie!}

{blurry but I love her so I put it anyway :) }

 {Matt and I ready to eat!}

In other news, we just signed Matt up for school full-time. Starting in January he'll go to school every Tuesday and Thursday from 5:30-10:00pm. He has one class online, too. I'm so excited for him that he'll be able to finally go full-time. I feel like we accomplished a lot saving for this. It felt good to pay, to just take the money from savings and pay. I see lots of chick flicks in my future, Tuesdays and Thursdays will be lonely around here. At least Cogsy can keep me company. Good thing we don't have kids yet, that would be hard. 

Matt and I decided to DVR the Macy's Parade tomorrow to watch while we decorate on Friday.

Zeek's Pizza with Chris and Katie tonight for trivia and then tomorrow bright and early we'll head down to Olympia for Thanksgiving : ) 

Happy Early Turkey Day everyone! {No internet tomorrow}

xoxo,

Our First Married Holiday Season!!

The holidays are finally here! 

Matt and I have a crazy exciting weekend ahead of us. Really, our holiday starts today! 

(I'm printing this out to frame for the holidays!)

 The Grinch (Jim Carrey version) is my favorite Christmas movie. I will watch it probably like 10 x's in December! 

I am making our first turkey today! I started a little while ago (squealing along the way). 

We are going to celebrate our own little Thanksgiving tonight with our friend Katie :) I am so excited to get to make this big dinner! Matt's going to make the potatoes, and I'm making the turkey, stuffing and corn. (there's only thee of us, we don't need that much food).

I'm super excited about it though.

I will for sure have pictures of this for you tomorrow! 

For Thanksgiving Day we are going to Matt's brothers house along with Matt's parents. I am looking forward to a relaxing day with family and am excited to see our nieces and nephew! It will be a full day of Kinect Dinseyland and yummy food! I'm in charge of "Nuts and Bolts" and Matt's making the potatoes. I look forward to the day when we have kids and I can make a feast for Thanksgiving! : ) 

We are still debating on when we're going to head down there. I really don't want to miss watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, I've never missed it and they don't have tv there. 

On Friday, Matt and I are going to start the morning off with a yummy breakfast casserole and then head to the local Christmas Tree Farm to cut down our tree!! Neither of us have ever done this before and we're so pumped...and a little nervous. Should be funny seeing a huge tree on our little Honda Civic! After we get it home we're going to spend the day decorating, watching Christmas movies, having a fire and drinking hot chocolate. Then, we're off to The Muppets!! We've been so excited for this movie to come out, Eeeee this weekend's going to be the best ever.

Saturday is equally as fun! Matt and I bought tickets to go and see the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Matt's never been and I love it. We're going to dress up and then go to dinner in the city! 

Sunday morning we might do our first After Turkey Day Trot 5-K at Magnuson Park in Seattle. I asked Matt about this a while ago but we haven't talked about it since. I really want to do it! I've never ran a 

5-K before, I don't think I've ever run that far in my life. Matt says he thinks I could do it. We'll see...

Sunday night we are doing one of our favorite Christmas traditions and heading to Bellevue for Snowflake Lane. They make it snow, have characters walking around, Christmas music and a Christmas drumming band. We love it! We might actually do this twice this year so my mom can see it too. 

Bellevue turns into mini-Disney for about 30 minutes and it's awesome!  

So there's that. I can't wait to post pictures from all of these events. Writing it out like this got me even more excited! We love Christmastime! I was scrapbooking our time living in Florida this morning and here's some pictures from our first Christmas together in 2008. I can't believe this will be our 4th Christmas together!! 

Merry Christmas! Love, Dale, Chelsea, Matt & Chip! 

hehe Matt looks so hot! 

(sorry Matt's family reading this, I can hear you making the barf noise, ha!)

(Oooo look how sunny!!!! Okay, maybe looking at these was a bad idea, Matt's not home and now I feel like crying *it's raining and dark here today, ew*)

Last day working at Disney World :(

Haha, that was seriously the funnest parade to be in ever! 

Mickey's Once Upon A Christmastime Parade 2008
Being an elf, "Spritz", I had the freedom to act ridiculous and say funny things to the guests. My best friend at Disney and fellow elf and I would go up to guests and say, "OK! This is Elf Idol, tell us who's better!" and we would sing Jingle Bells as loud and as obnoxious as we could. Most thought it was funny and every now and then the guests would just look at us like we were so weird and then we would just laugh more. Haha, we used to find Matt in the crowd and yell, "Oh, LOOK everyone, It's MATT!" He loooooved that, not! Eee I love Christmas. I think I was probably meant to be an elf in real life. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!!
xoxo,