Thanksgiving - Parents meet the Parents edition

Well Joe and I are back in town after an epic Thanksgiving weekend with the parents! Both sets! Yep, that's right Amy and Gary met Karen and Tom and well, I'd have to say the meet up was a success. I mean look at these guys, they are practically besties, right?!

Kickin' the kids butts on a post- Turkey meal walk. We needed it after ingesting too much/not enough of my fav. sweet potato soup!

And Karen's deeeeelish pumpkin and zuchinni bread...


As the parents bonded, the kids were busy perfecting our jump shots, obviously.


Jess and Paul - take 1- the starfish jump

Sarah and Joe - take 2 - the toyota jump and the meditating buddha

Jess and Paul - Take 3 - bendy limbs

Thanksgiving day treated us to an awesome sunset from the ridge!

But much to our family's dismay, the calorie burn didn't stop there - Joe and I coerced the crew into a little paper crane folding for the wedding. Here's a shot of Joe leading the crane folding workshop. My dad is probably asking for some extra help on the elusive "square" step, Tom is surely chanting our mantra to himself, "Happily Ever After," - right Tom?! And Paul is probably kicking back and thinking, C'mon Gary, it's not that hard! ha!

They rocked it! Although, not without a fair amount of good hearted griping :).

We even recruited the F4L to help! I'm thinking there might be some forced smiles here, especially from Ryan :).

We folded so many, we couldn't even fit all of them in our luggage!


Joe and I managed to sneak away for a couple runs! Including this "burly" one to the top of the Ramona Dam.

And this one around the lake...

I had to figure in a few ways to offset all the turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie I ate so I could fit into a wedding dress or two for the wedding dress shopping extravaganza! My mom, my future mother-in-law and the sister accompanied me to brave black Friday Wedding dress shopping! And well, these ladies helped me find a beautiful dress on a super Black Friday special! I felt so lucky to have us all together for this! Here's a quick shot from our pre-shopping girls lunch at the Winery! For a pic of the dress, well, you'll just have to come to the wedding!

All in all, maybe one of my favorite Thanksgivings ever! Joe and I feel so, so, so, so, so, so, so thankful to have not just one, but TWO families behind us. I have to say that one of the coolest things about getting married is the coming together of families. I just love the idea of family extending beyond blood relations, it's such a peaceful and joyful thing to me. And well I'm super happy to say that this family extending was truly peaceful and joyful!!

-Love, our kitchen crew!

Scenes from Friendsgiving #3

I can hardly believe it's Turkey time again and I can hardly believe that this is our 3rd annual Friendsgiving! Theme this year = Damn good food and man did the crew pull through! From butternut squash/mushroom bread pudding to twice baked potatoes, stuffing muffins, pomegranate/grapefruit salad, sauteed brussel sprouts to cider and cedar planked salmon - the food was damn good and so was the company as usual! Kudos to Kat and Erik for coming up with a round of Friendsgiving Jeopardy! Coolest thing about this year's gathering? We're all married or engaged! Ha, how's that for getting old! And at next year's Friendsgiving, we'll all be married! Feeling super thankful for all the love floating around in this group!

The crew folding cranes to build up our appetites...

Joe's cedar planked salmon.

A few of my favs, jars and leaves :).

Jars, leaves and cranes.

Our growing crane collection thanks to Kat, Lindsey and Laura!

Maybe my perfect weekend?

So, I think my perfect weekend consists of the following;

1) Two full nights of sleep with no alarms
2) A couple leisurely cups of chai
3) A hard trail run
4) New music discovery
5) An evening with friends
6) Getting really cool engagement photos back :)
7) A yoga class
8) A car cleaning session
9) Deelish homemade dinner
10) a good blogging sesh

Hmmmmm...am I getting really old and boring? Well maybe so but in any case, I got to do every one of these things this weekend and I couldn't be happier about it! Joe and I did our usual Windy Hill run after a full night sleep on Saturday morning and I have to say, it was one of my favorite runs in quite a while. One of my favorite things about this trail is the way that it changes just about every time we run it, whether it's the seasons, the fog, the rain, the sun, something is always different and I just revel in that! Saturday morning the trails were covered in fall leaves and the combo of the yellow, green and little bits of sunshine streaming through the trees just made me feel so grateful and so alive.

After a hot shower, chai #1 of the weekend, a couple hours of crossing some things off our to-do lists, and a new music discovery (I'm late to the party but Joe introduced me to Tim O'Brien this weekend and I've had him on my Spotify play list all day long today) Joe and I got a little gussied up and made our way out to celebrate Kat and Erik's engagement! Kat's parents threw a beautiful party at their home with a yummy buffet and and an awesome live Jazz trio! Good food, good music and some of my favorite peeps and some cool new peeps always makes my heart sing!

On our way home from Kat and Erik's engagement party, I checked my phone and had a text message and email from Lisa saying that she had posted our Engagement photos. I've been so super excited about getting these back all week and I was practically bursting at the seems on the drive home, anxious to take a look at Lisa's website when we got home! I felt so full of emotion as Joe and I got a chance to go through the photos - Lisa absolutely brought to life the exact vision we had for the shoot. As if she doesn't have enough to do as a mother of 4, she spent hours on Pinterest with me in the weeks leading up to the shoot culling engagement photos to come up with poses, lighting ideas etc. Her dedication to making our vision a reality is more meaningful to me than I could ever explain in words. It feels kind of like a dream come true, that this woman who I have shared so much of my life/relationship joys and sorrows with over the past two years via the blogosphere was the one that was behind the camera capturing the essence of Joe and I. There were a couple moments during the shoot when I just felt like tearing up thinking about how this was all unfolding. I feel so inspired by Lisa's kindness and friendship and so blessed knowing that Joe and I will have these photos for the rest of our lives, to remind us of how in love we are with each other and to share with current family and future family. Whew - I better cut the sap, before I drown myself in a puddle of tears over here - here's a link to the shoot! We're simply over the moon about them...

http://www.7ofjune.com/?p=899

So, although running is one of our favorite things to do together, I have to say that one of the best feelings for Joe and I is waking up on a Sunday morning and knowing that we are NOT going for a run! You know we love our runs, but we sure do treasure lazy weekend mornings too! We got another good night of sleep and with a hard run behind us, the only thing that we jumped out of bed to do on Sunday was to fire up a cup of coffee and chai! We didn't hang around the house too long though. I have been missing out on my regular Tuesday night yoga class because of basketball, so I told Joe that I wanted to head out for a late morning yoga class and he said he'd go with me! Yay! I love yoga on my own, but I love it even more when Joe joins! So we got our downward dog on and gosh, yoga always feels that much better the day after a hard run :). Our instructor had us think of something we were grateful for to start class and I found my mind racing as I mentally went through my list.

After yoga Joe and I ran a couple errands and then came home and I cleaned our cars. Call me crazy, but there is something so calming to me about having a clean car - I blame my mom and my Grandpa who always take pride in having clean cars :).

And that brings me to now. Joe made the most delicious homemade chicken enchiladas tonight and my belly is full of them and I am sitting here doing something that I love as much as him - blogging :). If that's not a perfect weekend, I don't know what is :).

oooh and a few pics of the weekend that I had to share...



Check out Joe's table! It's finished! The man amazes me - isn't this beautiful? He chopped one of our old IKEA tables up and made a square table with a beautiful tile inlay using tile that we bought n Santa Fe. I love it and it feels so special to have something that h enjoyed making so much in our home oooh and those roses are the flowers he had waiting me on Tuesday night after my first day of basketball practice. He's always tellin' me how proud he is of me for coaching - I'm so incredibly grateful for his support in my pursuit of things I love.



This was the most delicious cup of hot cocoa I sipped as I did some bball practice planning today. Made even more delicious because the mug was made by Lindsey:).



And this is the latest addition to the craft room/gym! A pull-up bar! Rule is, any time you walk by the bar you have to do a pull up :). We'll see how long that holds up!

Just a teaser...

Lisa - aka Super Mom of 4 - aka Photographer extraordinaire just posted a photo from our Engagement shoot last weekend. Lisa totally gave us the royal treatment last weekend. We arrived at her place at 1 to apple pie and coffee. After meeting the fam and chowing on some sweet treats we went to check out the photo site she had staked out - it was ABSOLUTELY perfect for us! She even found a couple posts that we could rig our mason jar lanterns from! She let me crash her bathroom to get ready. She spent two hours with us shooting hundreds of photos. She actually laid all the way down on her stomach on the road and on a grassy/weedy field to try to get the best possible shot of us. And to top it all off she tasked her sweet husband and kiddos to prep dinner for us when we returned! Here's a quick look!

http://www.7ofjune.com/?p=848

We love it Lisa!!!!

Life just got a little crazier, in a good way :)

Well not only am I planning a wedding this year, I'm now into my first week as JV basketball coach at a local private school for girls! Hello hardwoods :)! Season will mean long days from here to February, but I'm super amped about the group of young women I'll be working with this season! More than anything, I'm posting this morning to share just how grateful I am for two things that are already making the big time commitment easier to handle...

1) My new exercise bike! You all know I get a little grumpy when I don't get to break a little sweat - having this guy is already making it easier for me to get a workout in on these long days. I woke up this morning at 5:30 to jump on the bike for a half hour and it felt great to get my blood pumping this morning. It's so nice not to have to wake up even earlier so that I can drive to a gym and then drive back - major time saver!!!

2) JOE! I got home last night at 7 after practice and jumped on the bike to get a workout in. Meanwhile, he cooked up the most incredible pot of Gumbo! I got off the bike, showered and then got to sit down immediately to a hot dinner! And when we finished, he cleaned up while I made a practice plan for today. I feel so, so grateful for his support!