Thanksgiving in Chester

Josh and I knew that with buying a house and getting moved, there was no way we'd make it up to see my sister around Christmas, so we planned a trip for Thanksgiving to get up there and see them.

It was such a great weekend. We drove up the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and got there late that night. Thursday was a beautiful, relaxing Thanksgiving. Josh and Mark deep fried the turkey so we spent some time sitting outside enjoying the beautiful weather and tossing around a football. Dinner was delicious. Seriously, that turkey was the best I've ever had.

On Friday, we enjoyed some Black Friday shopping. Since we knew we were closing on our house in a couple weeks, there was a couple things we needed. We ended up just getting a couple small things and some pots and pans from Target. We didn't go out early in the morning, but man, Elliott was pooped through all the shopping!

On Saturday, we went out to a friend of Jamie and Mark's land and shot some guns. Mark has several guns so we shot them all. It was a lot of fun and Josh and I both shot some stuff we'd never shot before. Even Elliott got to shoot her first gun (a BB gun). We had a great time, even though it was freezing!

We had to head back on Sunday to get back so Josh could go to work on Monday, but we had the best weekend! We are so thankful to have family so close who we love so much!

Zoo and Fall Randomness

Another visit to the zoo, of course. And then just some random photos from fall. 

Chalk animals one balmy afternoon!

Piper was hiding from us. Haha. I just thought it was so cute. 

Halloween

Since actual Halloween was on a Monday this year, Josh was back up in Greenville for work. I decided to let the girls just pick something out of the dress up clothes to wear that night and Laurie and I took them around the neighborhood on the golf cart. They loved it. And it was over 80 degrees, so that was nice. But also weird! Haha. 

Ward Trunk or Treat

Our ward trunk or treat was last weekend and we had the best time! I totally procrastinated our costumes this year. I love planning costumes but I just felt unmotivated for some reason! So, we decided on our costumes the night before and I spent the day of the trunk or treat driving around trying to find stuff and put them together. Hey, future me, don't do that again. K thanks. 

But it came together nicely and we had a blast. Since the Gilmore Girls revival is coming out soon we went with Gilmore Girls as our theme. I was Lorelai, Josh was Luke, Elliott was Rory and Piper was Paul Anka, the dog. It was so much fun. Not everyone got the costumes, but I didn't care too much! Enough people understood it to make it fun. :) 

Getting her face painted by Donald Trump. haha!

Josh turns 32

Josh had a birthday! It wasn't the most eventful birthday he's had. But we did our best. Like I've mentioned before, he works about 2 hours from us so he lives in Greenville M-F and then comes home on the weekends. And of course, his birthday fell on a Wednesday. He doesn't usually come home during the week but there just happened to be a YM combined activity that day that he wanted to come back for. So he stopped at the house before heading out to HighWire with the YM and YW. I bought some donuts from a little local place for him and he opened gifts! We were thankful to see him on his actual birthday. We celebrated more officially that weekend with a fancy dinner to Mr. Friendly's! It was so delicious! 

Josh's birthday this year was especially memorable because we had an offer on a house accepted! We have been house hunting for a couple months now and the very first house we looked at came back on the market after the potential buyers backed out. I just happened to see it pop up on Zillow and contacted our agent. We had already seen it so we put in an offer before anyone else could get any in! And it was accepted! We feel so blessed. Hopefully everything will go smoothly with the closing process and we should be in our new home in Simpsonville by mid December! Hooray!! Happy birthday Joshie! 

Paris Mountain

Last week Morgan and Jenn took a trip to Utah to visit Jacob and Valerie. Laurie and Bronson went up to Simpsonville to take care of their kids. I went up Sunday evening with Josh and stayed until Tuesday evening to help out when Laurie had to leave. On Monday we took all the kids to Paris Mountain in North Greenville. It was beautiful. The leaves were all changing and it was such a gorgeous day! We walked all around, got really dirty and beat up and then got ice cream afterwards! A perfect day.