tis the season...

Game Day...

Last Saturday was the big game against Michigan! it was a really good game, and of course we Won! We had tickets to the game but we decided to sell them and just watch the game from home, which was a good idea because it was COLD!! we did walk down to campus for a little bit, before the game started to check out all the pre-football fun!

i made sure that brody was nice and toasty warm, so i put on his bear costume from halloween. everyone loved him! and he gave lots of college students High Fives! they loved it! this little guy knows how to Represent! :) without a doubt brody is stink'in cute!!!

living the tradition...

so here at Ohio State, during football season we always play our evil rivals the University of Michigan. we hate them, we despise them, they are scum between our toes, and we even have a song about how we all hate the whole state of Michigan. it's quite intense, and I find it quite humorous.

well besides playing them in football, there is a tradition that the 'thursday' before the big game against Michigan, students come together and jump into 'mirror lake' as a 'good luck tradition' to win the big game. mirror lake happens to be a pretty large pond on campus. it's a tradition that has gone on for like 70+ years. and it continues on year after year. and this year was no different. so when my awesome friend kelli emailed me asking me if i wanted to jump into 'mirror lake' this year, i was all about it!

this years jump actually took place on 'tuesday november 23rd' due to the 'thanksgiving' holiday. nonetheless the tradition has stayed alive! and it was CRAZY!!

we jumped into the lake around 11ish pm. it was COLD. there were literally thousands of students. and it was AWESOME! i jumped in with my friend Kelli, Cosette, Angie and angie's husband scottie jumped in too.

hi! so i figured if i was going to do this...i had to dress the part.

(me, angie, cosette and kelli)

O-H-I-O

here i am. i think the cape was a nice touch.

we had officially been warned! and i conveniently happen to have an

OHIO GO BUCKS sign in my car. imagine that.

here we are 'pre-jump' ... one can never spell out OHIO enough. ;)

SPLASH!!!!

kelli and i out in the pond....brrrrrr!

we did it!!!

we seriously had the best time! and the best part of the night probably had to be all the random people that kept coming up to me to ask if they could take a picture with me. yes that seriously happened. or maybe it was when a group of people asked me if it was my senior year and i was all decked out to jump in the lake. bahahhaha.

LOVED jumping in 'mirror lake' with these ladies! and i loved the spunk and spontaneity we all had to actually do it! we felt it was because of US, we Won the game against Michigan! :) we are just lucky, i guess! and next year tyson says he's gonna do it! let the good times roll!

if you really want to see how crazy it really was...click Here ... we made it online for the columbus newpaper, at about 38 seconds in looked to the left hand corner and it will show us jumping up and down in the water, you can see my cape...it's only 2 minutes long, but you totally can see what it was really like!

gotta love Traditions! O-H-I-O!

18 months.

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

-Dr. Seuss

i love you forever my brody bear

giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving

we had a great thanksgiving! we started the morning off with a tasty breakfast and watching the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, which brody LOVED, later in the day we headed over to our friends house where we enjoyed a wonderful super yummy dinner and ate with 14 friends, now that's something to give thanks too!

and we definitely had time to reflect on everything we are so blessed and thankful for! it's such a blessing to be where we are at this time in our lives! we are so grateful for FRIENDS and FAMILY near and far! we are thankful to our parents who love us. we are so thankful for brody and for the love and joy he brings to us every single day!! and we are thankful for our little family of three. we've lived in a lot of places and we've had so many adventures, but one things for sure, when you live far from family, you totally rely more on one another, which definitely strengthens us. and we are very grateful for our wonderful friends here in Ohio, who are like our family. we are thankful for the love our savior jesus christ offers us each and everyday. we are thankful for our testimony's of the gospel of jesus christ and that we know we are an eternal family! life is good and we feel so blessed! we are thankful!!!

Places Everyone...

Bats. Spiders. Candy Corn. Cobwebs. We're ready. We're set. Halloween Party here we come!

We had a great time gearing up for the halloween season. we threw a pretty fantastic Donut halloween party this year, and i am sure it will continue to be a tradition every year.

this is the invite i designed and sent out, i also made super cute mailing labels and covered the invites with spider webs and an orange spider, so when friends opened the envelope they had to dust off the cobwebs before reading the invite. totally lame, i forgot to take a picture of what that looked like, but believe me, it was cool!

here's some of the decor...

and some of our great friends that came...

jamie, nancy and kacie

brody with his best bud neal

caroline and paul

elizabeth, cadie and eric

zach and alyson

kelli and kendall

dan and rachael

As far as the menu went...it was pretty simple. the plan was to make some homemade donuts, but due to some other things going on, i bailed last minute and ordered donuts from one of our favorite places. ONLY...to find out when tyson came home with them, they messed up our order, so he took them back and told the people they messed up, only to bring all the donuts back home along with a gift card and giving us our money back. SWEET. kinda can't complain. but i was still pretty sad not to have 3 dozen of my most favorite pumpkin spice donuts. oh well. it was still all very very tasty!

the food table

"witches brew" aka the drinks...milk and apple cider

deadly good donuts

spider bites

krispy critters

mummy munch

super yummy treats and super simple...just the way we like it!

when you are at one of our parties there will always be a Pinata, in honor of the brody bear, he LOVES Pinatas! so of course we had to have one for this shin-dig!

rrrrrrr me matey!

seeing to the fact we had no where in the house to hang the pinata, tyson bravely held it up

brody's friend Kade ( aka the nasa astronaut ) getting ready for a nice hit

pretty sure we hyped all of our friends kids on enough sugar to last them till next year. but the kids LOVED it, and that makes us happy!

my little one after eating a donut and like 4 mini tootsie pops...life is good!

another fun thing we had at our party was a PHOTO BOOTH and it was a hit! it was awesome!

i made signs to lead everyone up to our hallway where we had the photo booth set up

i just happened to have extra curtains and a rod to hang them, it was perfect! you ask...what's behind the curtains?? well...

voila! i set up my mac that has a program called photo booth...i just set it up on an old chester drawers we have and filled the drawers with all sorts of fun things for everyone to put on. and i of course had instructions telling everyone what to do...the results were so great! here is just a taste of the fun...

Thanks to all our amazing friends that came! it was seriously hands down one of the most fun parties to date! lots of good treats, great friends, good conversations and lots of spooky fun!

On another note...Having a Kid and holidays are so magical, i love it!

I wish I could just extend fall for a few more weeks (Or months. That would be fine too.) I feel almost frantic to See everything and Do everything outside before this place turns into a dark and dreary, cold world.

I just love everything about the fall! now that halloween is WAY over and done...Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays... here we come!!!