Gobble Gobble!

We first want to wish everyone (Even though it was 2 days ago) a Happy Thanksgiving and safe Black Friday! We hope everyone is enjoying the Holidays and were able to stuff themselves full.  This year it was mine and Dillons first Thanksgiving together as Mr. and Mrs. it was just the two of us this year which meant I was able to do all the cooking for our meal, I cooked all the things Dillon wanted for Thanksgiving with his help in the kitchen. We were going to go to Seattle with my family to have Thanksgiving with Ashley and my other family there before she moves to Hawaii but Dillon had to work so we are staying at my parents house house and dog sitting for the week.  It has been real fun and very relaxing, Dillon and I finished putting up the Christmas lights on my parents house, played lots of games, watched movies by the fire place and drank hot co co with our pumpkin spice creamer and played with the dogs. The day before Thanksgiving my mom and sister and I skyped while we were both preparing our turkey for the next day, it was like our little cooking show lol.  It was interesting as Dillon and I were trying to finding the innards and the neck within the turkey and were cleaning it and rubbing it down with our brine.  On Thanksgiving we got up early as its been a tradition ever since I was little to watch the Thanksgiving and Macys parade and have breakfast.  We had breakfast burritos which had sausage, eggs, hash browns with bell peppers and salsa in it and then we had onion dip and artichoke and spinach dip to snack on throughout the rest of the day.  We started cooking our yummy turkey, funeral potatoes, yum yum corn, rolls, deviled eggs, stuffing, mashed potatoes as well as twice baked potatoes, Dillon is always such a good helper in the kitchen.  We also had pumpkin pie and Dillons jello casserole for dessert (which I absolutely love, it's so refreshing mm). At the dinner table Dillon and I both said what we were thankful for and we played the thankful game where we would alternate each letter in the alphabet and say what we were grateful for. There are so many things to be grateful for and playing that game really made us realize all the little things we should be grateful for.  We are so thankful for so much and there will never be enough words to express our appreciation for all the lord has blessed us with.  We are so grateful for such amazing family and friends, our education, our home, the experiences we have every single day and how they help us grow and bring us closer as a couple, our health we have been so lucky to have good health so we are able to do the things we need to every day, for temples and the knowledge we have of the eternities and how families can be together forever.  I know for myself that I am extremely Thankful to have such an amazing husband that loves me and works hard to support and provide for our little family, that takes care of me, is so crazy and fun, encourages me to do the things I don't think I can and who makes me a better person. After dinner we relaxed a little then went to the movies and saw Breaking Dawn and then we drove around Orem to places we knew were gonna have ridiculous lines for Black Friday to see how crazy it was.  We didn't go black friday shopping this year because there wasn't anything we really were wanting but we did go out around noon to go clothes shopping.  Now that Thanksgiving is over I cannot wait for Christmas to come around I absolutely love decorating, seeing all the lights, drinking hot chocolate with creamer, and watching Christmas movies it's one of the best times of the year for sure.  

Rubbing the turkey with Brine. Ash on skype in the background doing her turkey!

glazing mm

Putting up the christmas lights

Dillon Getting ready to cut the turkey

He did so good

my favorite are those rolls

One Month Anniversary!

Exactly one month ago from this very day I was sealed to my best friend for time and all eternity.  Our wedding day just seemed so surreal to us but was everything we had dreamed of and more! I am so blessed to have such a loving, sensitive, spiritual, positive, supportive, hardworking and crazy husband in my life who loves me no matter the day or time and who does so much for me and our marriage. Married life has been a complete BLAST! we have had so much fun this past month as Mr. and Mrs. transforming our little apartment into a home, eating meals together daily where we discuss how our day has gone and confide in one another and on top of all that there is nothing in the world that compares to being able to go to sleep and waking up next to the man of your dreams every single day.  I recently made the big name change and am still getting used to signing my new name and being referred to as Mrs. or Chelsey Swanson.  It still causes butterflies in our stomach when we or others refer to us as husband and wife.  Daily we are saying to each other, "We are married! You are my husband or you are my wife!" we still can't believe that this special time in our lives has finally come and can't wait to see what other adventures life has in store for us.

My amazing husband and a quick update!

      So I have quite a bit to update on but first things first I just love opportunities where I can just rave about my wonderful husband.  He is such a hard worker, positive, supportive, thoughtful, loving, creative and everything wonderful you can think of, the definition of your "dream man."  Dillon is a full-time student at UVU in the Civil engineering program with an emphasis in fire protection engineering as well as working at Wells Fargo so he is gone from 8 am to 7 pm on school days and busy studying everyday. As busy as he is he still makes time for me everyday, time for weekly temple night together, and to donate plasma.  Luckily he gets off work early on Saturdays, there's no school and he has Sundays off so we get to spend time together. 
       Even with knowing his busy schedule, at the beginning of the week when we were writing out our dunner menu for the week he volunteered to make dinner on Friday.  Little did we know I would come down with the stomach flu towards the end of the weekend so he making dinner on Friday was such a big help.  The whole week I was so excited to see what he was going to make since he wanted to surprise me and finally the day came.  He had tucked me into our warm bed to rest and brought me some ginger ale to help with my stomach and he got to work making dinner.  Oh man was it DELICIOUS! I craaave his meal everyday now! he made a spinach ravioli lasagna casserole mmm mmm. He is such a great cook and cleans as he goes and washes his dishes even though he washes dishes every night, what a man right????

Dillon got his badge at Wells Fargo this past week as well it is so cute to see him all dressy and profesh and to hear about his day when I see him in the evening.  This is the first job he's had that he really enjoys.  He will be working as a teller for now but is hoping to be made a banker within the next few months.  I am so proud of him he mos def is a go getter!

So profesh!

 Another fun activity we were able to attend recently was a type of Country Fair that UVU was doing.  We just got out of class and was heading to our car but as we walked by the ballroom the place was decorated crazy cool like the Amazon and there was a bunch of music and people dressed up so we decided to check it out.  Tucanos was there serving their cheese balls and yummy grilled pineapple as well as lemonade. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, China, Japan, Countries in Africa, Finland, Iraq etc were all there displaying their country, their dress, language, activities as well as food.  It was fun to walk around and see things from all these countries and try a bunch of yummy foods.  On our way out we spotted these dog carriers and of course wanted to go see what was in them and to our surprise it wasn't a cat or dog but parrots! and yes we just had to hold them.  The lady was so nice and let us do so which was fun, the parrots were so cute and talked to us which was neat.

    If you haven't been to Me Crepes yet in Provo you should head out there, it's so yummy they have several different types of crepes on their menu from breakfast to dessert.  Dillon and I stopped by and tried their Oreo Crepe and it was mm mm good! Take a look at it! How can you not want to down that baby!

^Country Fair^

Today when Dillon and I got out of class around 7 and were going to start heading back to our car we saw a all this amazon jungle looking decorations and fire in one of the hallways and decided to go check it out and good thing we did! The international students were in the ballroom area at UVU and were putting on a country fair type of thing and they had lots of information about their country as well as food and everyone was dressed up and it looked as if they had a program of dances and other things planned that night.  It was such a fun atmosphere and they food was sure yummy, tucanos was even there mmm grilled pineapple :) After walking around and trying all the food and seeing all the displays we saw cages in the middle of the room but no one was around it and of course us being animal lovers ran over just to see what were in the cages and come to find out they were parrots! and yes we just had to touch and hold them, which we were able to do and we LOVED it! They were even talking to us :) loved it.

*HAPPY HALLOWEEN! *

This year for Halloween we went to my parents house to celebrate.  It was lots of fun my mom made delicious chilli in pumpkin bread bowls for dinner then she made pumpkin crunch and pumpkin cream cheese bars which made your mouth water.  After we ate we had a pumpkin carving contest and we skyped Ashley all the way in Washington so she could be the judge. Here are some pictures :)

Our first Halloween Decoration

Kayla, Brand, Tatiana & Casey

Brand & Kayla and their masterpiece (1st place winners)

Mom and Dad (5th place)

Tatiana & Casey (3rd place)

Yummy dessert

2nd place winners (it was a tie)

  We are all very competitive and we take pumpkin carving very seriously lol first place winner went to brandee and Kayla, 2nd place was Dillon and I, 3rd place was Tatiana and Casey, 4th place was Dustin and his polynesia pumpkin and 5th place was my parents.  Dillon and I were given Krispy Kreme booklets where we can get a free doughnut everyday (Total of 20)! mmmm! On actual Halloween Dillon and I didn't do anything we both had school and he had to work.  However we bought 2 bags of candy hoping we'd get some trick or treaters but we only got one knock on our door.  Still it was exciting having our first trick or treaters and hey....that means more candy for us :)