Thanksgiving 2011

Our first MARRIED Thanksgiving! Originally Thanksgiving was suppose to be held in our DC apartment so my family could enjoy being in DC for the holidays.. slight change of plans on that one. This year Thanksgiving was held in Jacksonville at my parents house. My parents were nice enough to let me plan and organize Thanksgiving as if it was my house.

Planning: I spent the entire month of November looking at recipes, decorations, and entertaining ideas. With the help of pinterst and several blogs I came up with some great and not so great recipes. Our menu included:
Speciality Drink: Iced hot chocolate martinis
Appetizers: Spicy Crab dip and pumpkin cheese balls
Main Meal: Turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potato casserole, sweet potato casserole, spicy cornbread stuffing, macaroni and cheese... is that it?!
Dessert: Pilgrim hat cookies, pumpkin pie, and mini pumpkin cheese cake bites

Games: Conversation starters for the meal, turkey beer pong after dinner

I even organized the grocery list into sections and typed it- who likes grocery shopping for Thanksgiving?! Plus you always forget something!  The cooking started on Tuesday night, cooked all day Wednesday and half of the day on Thursday. I was exhausted! Someone mentioned Christmas and I almost died! Here are the pictures:

Pilgrim hats- the biggest hit of the day! The yellow icing for the buckle continually slid off the cookie- hints the red icing.

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Mini Carmel Pumpkin Cheesecakes

My mom's china and mine! We had to mix and match because Jamie and I don't have enough yet.

Sweet Potato Casserole Yum!

Cheese balls in a pumpkin shape

Iced hot chocolate martini- YUM!!

The blender exploded with too much martini- next time we will make half!

Spicy crab dip- yum yum

One of the cooks :)

Pumpkins with everyone's initial on the for a place setting

My $4 arrangement

Our first Thanksgiving!

Turkey Pong

Turkey pong tournament!

The winners

Oscar wanted to play

The "old farts"

The girl team

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Our new Norwegian friend

Everything was great except..the macaroni and cheese (I can never seem to make macaroni right unless it from the box) and the pumpkin pie with spiced icing (too many flavors or something). But with only two bad recipes I think we did a great job! Overall, Thanksgiving was a huge success! My dad invited one of Jamie's coworkers from Norway and her friends to join us. They really enjoyed all the food and we enjoyed learning more about Norway! It was great to have a full house and lots of fun. The conversation starters did help the dinner table due to the fact we didn't know two of our guests. And after dinner we started the Turkey Pong tournament with breaks of flip cup. The young Norwegian's killed us all in beer pong.. even though they claim they don't play it in Norway.. hmmm. We did miss all of our other family members but hopefully they will all come for Christmas! 


Friday night, we went down to St. Augustine to check out all the lights. Although, my pictures don't show it, they were amazing! St. Augustine is so pretty! Jamie and I took our engagement pictures in St. Augustine the day after Christmas but it was during the day so we couldn't see the lights. It was fun going back to where we took our pictures. We ate dinner at this great little Italian restaurant that had great wine and food. Then we walked around to check out the lights and sites. And of course ended the evening with some sweet treats! The rest of the weekend we spent running, riding my parents beach bikes, and shopping for our own beach bikes. The weather was beautiful! It was a great weekend!

Italian Beer

The lights in St. Augustine

The lights in St. Augustine

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Moving Week

It has been our first week in Jacksonville so I thought I would update everyone on our new life!

Last Sunday we packed up everything from Virginia and made the long 11-12 hour drive to Florida. It was a very long and exhausting day but we all made it safely! Monday we spent the day putting all of our stuff in storage with the help of some very nice friends. Returned the rental truck, moved stuff into my parents house, and Jamie went off for his first bit of orientation. It was another busy, exhausting day! Tuesday was the start of Jamie's first week at his new job. He has been up early working out and up late studying all of the new information. He even made it to an early networking group Wednesday morning. He is doing a great job! I am very proud of all of his hard work! By Friday he was ready for some R&R.

My week has been a little less hectic. I spent Tuesday trying to figure out where to put all of our stuff in my parents house... which unsuccessfully most of it is in piles or still in bags. UGH! I spent Wednesday making appointments to see apartments and doing organizing for my job. Thursday I attempted to get my license and take passport pictures... that didn't happen. I needed my marriage license that was at the passport place and I needed to redo the passport pictures to get my marriage license back but you can't wear a white shirt in your picture.. I also found out that our car insurance prices are going to triple being in the state of Florida. So Thursday I was annoyed. But Friday I went for my first day of orientation and LOVED it! I am so excited to have my own very nice office and everyone was helpful and nice! My commute was 10 minutes. I was able to finish my Medicaid application- that has been a nightmare- and take my passport pictures. I am actually excited to go to work tomorrow and a little nervous.

Our first weekend we spent getting things done. Snooze! Jamie got a new suit, studied, and caught up on some sleep. I spent time running with a friend, shopping for work stuff (candy land anyone?), and printing wedding pictures :) We also went apartment hunting on Saturday and after driving all over we ended up liking the first apartment we looked at! The apartment is awesome- 1300 square feet, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, screened in porch, nice kitchen with a island, and a laundry ROOM (not a closet a ROOM). The apartments are 2 years old. The amenities are awesome as well. It's only 6 miles away from the beach, 3 miles from the town center, really close to both of our works, and hahah still close to my parents less than 1 mile... We are very excited to move in December 10th!! Next on our list is a coed soccer game. My first soccer game. I'm pretty nervous about it... Updates to come.

*Oscar weight loss challenge update* We did attempt to feed Stella and Oscar wet cat food and that back fired. There was a lot of accidents (from both ends) from both cats. So we will NOT be switching to wet cat food. And we have tried to play with Oscar more but no weight loss. We even thought living in my parents big house with stairs would help.. no luck. I think he looks like he lost weight but nada. It looks like Oscar just may be a fat cat for life.