Holiday in the sun

I hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving! We spent the day with friends here in SoCal and had a lovely holiday. You just can't go wrong with good food and good company! When we realized we wouldn't be going "home" for Thanksgiving, I had a moment of panic that I'd have to repeat last year's turkey experience all by myself. But, thankfully, our friends Duane and Kaley invited us to their dinner party and took care of all the hard stuff. My only assignment this year was pie, and although cooking may not be my favorite pastime, I jump at any chance to bake. Let's just say sugar and I get along really well.

To allow for all that yummy goodness, I went on my annual Thanksgiving morning run and even convinced Matt to come with me this year. We wore November-ish workout clothes and immediately regretted it due to the warm, sunny weather. Sometimes we forget we live in Southern California.

Then it was off to Duane and Kaley's house, which was perfectly themed as usual. Kaley is an entertaining pro and I'm more than a little jealous of all of her adorable decorations!

The table looked beautiful and the food smelled like heaven--and tasted like it, too.

After dinner, the couples spent hours talking while the kids played. I entirely neglected my camera after the table pictures, so I unfortunately don't have any pictures of all of us. Right before we left, though, I remembered the camera and took a quick one of us with Duane, Kaley and their darling baby boy Gabe.

As I said, it was a lovely Thanksgiving. The absolute best part of it, though, was taking a day to remember all of the things that we are so thankful for--each other, our families, our friends, our health, our home, our education, America, our jobs, California's beautiful weather, chocolate, and football, to name a few. Of course, more than anything, we are grateful for our loving Heavenly Father who has blessed us with so much. We are so excited to enter this holiday season when we focus so much on the birth of His son, Jesus Christ, who is our greatest blessing of all.