thanksgiving(s) 2014.

I can't believe it is almost Christmas, which means this post is really late, but I have been a crazy woman running around and packing for our Florida trip next week.  Also, my computer was acting up and thanks to my wonderful husband, he installed a new, bigger & better hard drive and now it's like a brand new machine.  

Anyways, back to Thanksgiving... I had to work the day before and day after, which isn't exactly a good schedule for traveling to Lafayette to see both families, so we decided to host at our house!  This was my second time cooking a turkey this year and thankfully it was a success!  Meal planning was tricky bc Thanksgiving fell on day 15 of my Whole30 challenge, so everything had to be gluten free, dairy free, sugar free and alcohol free :(   Even with all of the rules, I think it turned out pretty great!  And we had some of the good, standard turkey day food for everyone else not being tortured by the diet.  Maybe everyone else thought it was gross, who knows, but they didn't tell me that :)  

After work on Friday, we headed to Lafayette for a dinner out w/ friends and then another Thanksgiving day celebration on Saturday with Darin's family.  We ended the weekend with a trip to Indy with our friends Tait & Natalie to sit in the second row, on the 40 yard line at the Colts game, which was SO fun.  Watching football that close is a totally different experience.  We sat on the opposing side, so the players were all upset b/c they were losing pretty badly.  A few helmets were thrown and several cuss words could be heard... :)  It was a great Christmas present for us! 

the dunn family (fall).

Every time we schedule a photo session, the weather looks so great for the entire week.  And then the actual day rolls around and it is either 15 degrees and 10 inches of snow (maternity pics), 85 and humid (5 month pics) or this time, rainy allllll day until literally minutes before we started taking pics!  Thankfully the rain cleared and we were able to get to work.  The trees were spectacular... I barely made any in black & white b/c the colors were just too gorgeous.  

I seriously love these guys so much.  Barrett is such a good sport (Matt is too) while Jamie and I just put them through every single pose and every location we can find :)  Barrett is the happiest little guy and I am so glad I can make him smile.  I even threw leaves onto my head to get him to grin :)  Enjoy!

halloween/friends-giving!

This was probably the last year that I could pick out Henry's halloween costume without him having an opinion.  I wanted him to be one of his favorite things and since I couldn't find an M&M costume, a green crayon was the next best thing!  The weather looked so promising towards the beginning of the week... 78 and sorta sunny on Monday.  The extended forecast progressively got worse as the week went on.  Who would have thought we would have snow flurries and tornado-like winds the day of Halloween?!  Thankfully, Henry was able to dress up for his "mommy & me" class on Thursday, so we snapped some pictures then.  He wore his costume on Friday too & we went to visit my friend Allison @ Walgreen's and then to see my coworkers @ CVS :)  We had 5 trick or treaters (all at once) and that was it.  I'm so glad he doesn't really understand the concept of trick or treating yet, so he didn't realize he was missing out on anything!   

^^kids in costumes are just the cutest!^^

^^he wouldn't touch the cupcake w/ his hands... he ate all the icing with his mouth only, haha^^

This weekend we decided to host our first annual Friends-Giving!  There is nothing I love more than decorating and planning a party.  Everything about the entire process is so fun for me... making the table decor, finding recipes, rearranging my house :)  We opted for a pot luck and it turned out fantastic!  So much good food with so many great friends!  Henry was all over the place, talking up a storm as usual.  He played with both Barrett & Eli and did his best to share his toys.  Barrett was loving every minute of being in a new house with new toys!  I really regret not getting more pics of the entire event but we will always remember having a good time!