November 2014

In November, Elizabeth's family came down to Utah for a visit. We got to spend a little time with them at the cabin and then in Salt Lake with Samuel and Sarah.

For Thanksgiving, we got to visit Thomas' parents in Florida.

We toured old town Pensacola

We visited IHMC

I all of a sudden started looking pregnant :) My belly really popped that week.

The turkey: deep-fried & delicious!

We're glad we could spend time with family this November, especially getting to visit Thomas' parents where they live. We have much to be grateful for :)

oxox

September 2014

September was a good month! The weather started to turn more autumn-like & we got a fair amount of rain. We had a couple of "weird" Sundays (stake conference & a temple dedication) that convinced us we could get used to just 2 hours of church at 10 AM. We also got to enjoy harvest a little.

We went to a u-pick raspberry patch south of Provo (you can see the Payson temple if you look closely at the next picture, taken just around the corner from where we picked berries):

About 5 lbs of raspberries!

We went to a Bradshaw wedding:

We saw Sterling's band at their 9/11 memorial performance:

Sterling's family allowed us to glean their peach trees. We processed about 30 lbs of peaches (with the help of our canner, purchased that weekend!):

Coincidentally, we also announced to our families that our own little "peach" will be here in March.

We bottled 8 pints of peach halves and 10 pints of peach jam, froze a few pounds of peach slices, and used the remaining fruit for 2 9*13 pans of peach crisp!

We spent the following weekend up at the cabin, with a family from the ward joining us for one night & a day trip to Cascade Springs:

We decided mid-September is the ideal time for the cabin. The surrounding trees were turning their fall colors, the nights were cool, we got a day of sunshine and one of rain... it was really beautiful and the perfect start to autumn.

oxox

March 2014

In March, I had an opportunity to help teach a PREP workshop with my fellow PREP curriculum students. That was a good experience.

We celebrated my birthday and our anniversary with a trip to Tucanos. On my actual birthday we went to the temple and to Denny's for my free grand slam and finished out the night with blizzards from DQ.

My cousin returned from his mission, so we went to his homecoming talk and then to an open house.

We decided to take a long weekend for our 4th anniversary and go to the cabin! We weren't expecting to see quite so much snow...

But we had a lovely time anyway and even made a romantic meal together.

Thomas had an Elders Quorum (& families) activity that weekend that we came back for:

And we brought some friends back up to the cabin for lunch & games afterward.

oxox

Bradshaw-Paulson Thanksgiving 2013

Trying to figure out holidays and how/where/with whom to spend them as a married couple with full-time jobs and no kids is challenging! We love getting to visit family, but with more specialized positions at work and limited time off, it is difficult to plan around schedules and so on.

Last Thanksgiving, in order to see both Thomas' parents and mine, we invited them all to the Bradshaw family cabin for a few days.

Our first night up there, we had a yummy dinner and then got to work on Thanksgiving crafts and food preparation.

Samuel joined us, too. We did some crafts, puzzles, games... lots of cooking! And ate a lot of delicious food.

Since we were together, I made a Bûche de Noël for Thomas' birthday, and he opened a few gifts we'd brought:

That Saturday, we all went to Salt Lake to attend an endowment session at the Salt Lake Temple and then attend a special concert at the Tabernacle.

Looks like I need my sister's photo editing skills to lighten this one up a bit!

Everyone was headed home by Sunday and Monday. We got home Monday and set up our Christmas tree. Thomas' parents stopped by for dinner before their flight after running some errands that day.

My pictures are always the blurry ones...

It was a Thanksgiving to remember! We all got to know each other better and everyone contributed to an enjoyable atmosphere and time.

oxox