An Anderson Thanksgiving!

So I know I'm a little late on this post but better late than never!

Ok, so my brother-in-law Nick got his mission call a couple of weeks ago and he's going to Paraguay! We're so excited for him! My other brother-in-law is in Argentina right now so it'll be cool for them both to be in South America at the same time for awhile! Anyway, Nick decided to go through the Salt Lake temple the weekend before Thanksgiving break and we got to go with him. I'd never been through the Salt Lake temple or been to live session before so I was pretty stoked! Let's just say that there are no words to fully describe how amazing it was! What an amazing and absolutely beautiful temple. Wow. Also, it was really nice to go to the temple with a lot of the Andersons for the first time since I went through last year. Their family is pretty great! But if you haven't been to the Salt Lake temple yet you should definitely go the next chance you get!

Speaking of temples, I was also able to go to my first live sealing last week since I got married. Travis' cousin Seth got married last Tuesday in the Provo temple. It was pretty awesome to finally be able to go to a live sealing where I could just listen and watch everything rather than being the one at the altar! Yay for temple marriage!

After the wedding luncheon that afternoon, Travis' family decided to take off and make our way back to Colorado in order to start the festivities of an Anderson Thanksgiving. Now ever since I met Travis I had always heard about how amazing Thanksgiving is with the Anderson family so needless to say I was pretty excited! We finally made it back to Colorado around 1:30 am Wednesday morning. It was nice to have other people in the car to keep the driver awake because I pretty much slept for 3/4 of the eight hour drive. Whoops!

So Wednesday was a day full of shopping for food and cooking food! For those of you who don't know, my mother-in-law Lori is probably the world's best cook so I learned a lot of pretty good cooking lessons that I hope to one day use myself! Seriously, all of us women were in that kitchen all day (while all the guys were in the basement playing video games...haha) but it was totally worth it because that food was amazing! Later that night we all went to see The Blind Side which was so good! Made me cry of course and pretty much melted my heart. Definitely recommend it. Oh and of course I saw New Moon also. It was pretty good. But unlike most girls it made me even more of an Edward fan and even less of a Jacob fan...Go team Edward! :)

So then Thursday finally came, the day I'd been looking forward to the most since becoming an Anderson. I woke up to once again find Lori working away in the kitchen (that woman is amazing!) and all the guys gearing up for their annual Turkey Bowl. So after a long morning of more cooking and lots of football it was time to eat. Their family has to have Thanksgiving dinner at the church since there are so many of them. Kinda
crazy since I'm use to only having about 10 people at Thanksgiving dinner haha. Everyone brought a TON of food! It was seriously like an all you can eat buffet. I think I probably gained at least ten pounds that night. But it was well worth it. After eating, Lori's band (yup my mother-in-law is in a band!) came and performed for all of us and then we played a bunch of games (which I totally dominated Travis in!) and then came the pie eating contest. Every one was given a piece of pie and then we had to eat it as fast as we could with our hands tied behind our backs. So much fun! There was pie filling everywhere haha. After that were more and more games. We were at the church until about 11:30 pm. Crazy!

Well since we were all so wiped out from the day before we decided to not venture our way to the stores the next day until about noon. As fun as it is to be fighting your way through insane lines at 5 am we all needed some extra sleep. But once we made it to the stores we were gone all day! We all got some pretty good deals and some pretty awesome things! I got some new brown boots, some movies, and a bunch of lotion. I love the day after Thanksgiving shopping! Also, my sister-in-law Marissa, Travis' cousin's wife Summer, and I all decided to dye our hair over this break just for the heck of it. Marissa went red, Summer got blonde highlights and I went dark brown. Afterwords we all watched chick flicks until like 2 am. Once again, pretty great day.

Saturday morning Travis and I flew back in order to make it to the BYU vs. Utah game (Travis insisted that we be back...I'm going to let him tell you about it). I'm not going to lie though, I was really sad to be leaving so soon! Sometimes I can't believe that I was lucky enough to find a husband with such an amazing family. I feel like I've been part of their family forever and I couldn't be happier about that (except that I was right about all the pregnancy questions...haha I really don't mind. I think it's actually pretty funny!). So thanks for an awesome Anderson Thanksgiving! Can't wait for next year :)