Turkey and spice and everything nice

So this was a big week for us...we just hit our 6 month anniversary, and exactly a week later was our 1-year-since-getting-engaged anniversary. Since we got engaged in here in DC, during the week of Thanksgiving, and had the big dinner away from our families then too, this year brought back a flood of memories, and we can't believe it's already been a year.

What a great year though! We have so much to be thankful for, and while I'm sure a blog is a great place to express all our "thankful fors", we'll just save most of it for our journals. Last year was our famous year of not breaking the wishbone since we felt so blessed we had nothing to wish for. This year we might have broken it for a wish or two :), but overall, we feel very blessed and happy as ever.

The weather was awesome here for Turkey Day, and we were especially grateful for that because I (this is Melissa) had decided a great pre-feast family activity would be to join the masses and jump into the Alexandria 5 Mile Turkey Trot. I got Jon to join me after just a little bit of "it'll be fun!" talk (Jon describes it more as "coercion" and says "that's what wives are for"; he loves me). So we were up 'n at 'em as of 8 am to eat our runner's meal and head to the starting line with 2,500 other locals. (Who'da thought people would rather run than sleep on a holiday?) Although the officials had to ask us to slow down a bit so as not to embarrass the trained runners and steal their trophies, we did manage to finish in a decent time...considering we didn't train. At all. Meaning Jon hadn't run ONCE since the marathon in October of last year. And I'd run once or twice in the last month. Maybe we're just dumb, whatever. Everyone feels better about feast eating after 5 miles. Not that we could walk the next day....no pain no gain...

We had the fun experience later that day of having Thanksgiving dinner with some friends from the ward, who were so great, and we had a blast. The food was amazing, the company was great, and the evening ended with a Thanksgiving bingo game, accompanied with little gifts--who could ask for more than that?

Of course we missed our families, and we hope they know we think about them and we'd love to be with them (we also love when they visit us here! wink, wink), but it's fun to be our own little family having experiences out here on the beautiful east coast. We love Thanksgiving. That being said...bring on the Christmas tunes and Christmas lights and halls of decking! We may or may not have decorated already...photos to come in the near future.

The Coming Home, Ski CD 2007-08

Sick ski/snowboard vids are put out all season long by "j product video", each season we make a Ski CD soundtrack of songs to use for the upcoming ski videos. Here is the CD design for the 2007-08 ski season. Nick's the mastermind behind this year's music, and Jon threw down the design expertise, with a cameo drawing by Nick's oldest, Cole.

Elder Smith in Hawaii

This is Elder Smith in his 'Other Side of Heaven' aka Hawaii, posing with a dead wild pig, and its happy hunters.

Justin Boardin' in the White Stuff

Melissa wanted to know how to put videos on our blog so I found the sickest video we have to test it out. This is Jon's bro Justin.

Jon & Melissa... Simpsonized

I've got to attribute this one to the Jesse Spencer, I saw it on his blog first, (thanks for the idea Juice). If you're interested in simpsonizing yourself, go to simpsonizeme.com

Nieces and Nephews

Just wanted to take this space to show off our cute little family members... Cole, Eric, & Ella... Kaylee... Jensen & Drew... Jayci

Technicolor Trees Along the Potomac in the Autumntime

We'd kicked ourselves long enough and decided we were long overdue to take advantage of the famed technicolor dreamland that spreads like an epidemic of colors on the east coast come mid-October to mid-November. Afraid we would miss our chance any day now and the leaves would all of the sudden be brown and dead on the ground, we deemed today the day to cruise the GW Parkway after early morning church to catch our own piece of autumn for the year. And catch it we did.

So here's a smattering of reds, golds, browns, greens, oranges, and yellows along the Potomac near Mount Vernon that we were eating up by the mile, leaving us guilt-free for documenting the fall before winter sneaks in on us.