Thanksgiving week!

This week started like any normal week: class, studying, visiting my preceptor, etc. Tuesday night we had a fondue party with some of my friends from medical school and their fiances. There were three couples and we each brought a course. T and I brought the cheese :) I'll have to share the recipe my friend Dana used for the broth to cook the meat, it was delicious!

Sarah and Mike have a fancy fountain!

Then, Wednesday after class the week became even more awesome. We drove to Grand Island to spend Thanksgiving day with T's grandparents and Mom. We had all the traditional fixins: turkey, potatoes, giblet gravy, dressing, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, "green" salad,  rolls, and multiple pies.

Friday, Travis was back to work, and I headed to my parent's house to help decorate the outside of the house for Christmas and hang with Grandma Eberhardt:

Hanging over-sized ornaments on the trees

Grandma was there for moral support :)

Isn't she pretty!

 After my parent's house, I headed home so T & I could decorate our house for our first married Christmas!

Saturday, my family came over to our house for dinner and to celebrate Christmas early with Grandma Eberhardt. The menu consisted of pomegranate & apple salad, burgers on the grill, baked potato wedges, and chocolate souffle for dessert. I'll post the recipes separately sometime later this week.

My family is the best! They even help clean up afterwards!

Some of my favorite people ever!

We laughed a lot too 

After dinner, we played LCR until we were ready for dessert. Our poor neighbors! This picture is deceiving  because we are actually quite rambunctious and competitive!

Now its back to the real world for three more weeks.. then its Christmas break baby!! I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving! Travis and I have our last Thanksgiving activity tonight when I get back from choir-- reading what we were thankful for this year! Each night we each wrote down one thing on a slip of paper.. I am excited to see what we wrote!

Last November Post of 2011

Thanks Mom for the flowers!

I feel completely overwhelmed as I sit to write this post. Its the last one in November, and I know I have not even begun to scratch the surface on things I am thankful for. I've also listed such random things... not necessarily the things that I am most thankful for. But... I am going to get over it and write another (disorganized, but genuine) post.

Tonight, I am thankful for a husband who is simple to please. Want to know what food he craves? Sandwiches. He told me today he would be the happiest man in the world if I worked at Subway and brought him a sandwich each night for dinner. Simple, huh? He is so fantastic. I know we are only approaching six months, but he takes such good care of me! Even silly things, like cleaning the house. I am sure that I would survive if our place was cluttered and dusty, but he knows that a messy house adds to my stress, so he helps keep it nice. 

Though the cleaning is much appreciated, the most fabulous thing about Travis is his kind heart. I asked him what I should write about this week on the blog. Well, more specifically, I asked what I should profess to be thankful for. His answer? That all of our needs are met right now... and I couldn't agree with him more. It is so easy to focus on wants. I am sure we could all create gigantic lists of things that would nice/convenient/fun to enjoy. But we both agree, we are completely physically/spiritually/emotionally cared for. Could we ask for anything more this holiday season? Its fantastic! 

The leftover salad- YUM

So this wouldn't be the Stoecker Family Blog without mention of food, and we had some fabulous new recipes this week! But I am not going to share them.. yet.. because I plan to serve the same recipes to many of you all this holiday season! Saturday we had dinner at a friend's and we brought a pomegranate+apple+walnut salad and garlic+oregano+parsley rolls. They were both so delicious! So delicious, that we even ate the leftover-from-last-night-drenched-in-dressing-almost-too-soggy salad today for lunch. It was even better the second day. Our friends also introduced us to a hilarious comedian, Brian Regan. Check him out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiUsfEkVRDY 

The last thing I want to record, is some year-specific information so we can reread this 20-40 years and laugh.  This November, I am especially thankful for the following musical artists: Jon Schmidt, Ingrid Michaelson, Eric Hutchinson, and Michael Buble. They are my go-to artists on Pandora when I am not studying. And for fashion trends, I like: round scarves, tall boots over skinny jeans, and crackle topcoat nail polish. We have been watching the Twilight Movies (Travis is just learning about Team Edward vs Team Jacob), Burn Notice, Covert Affairs, Big Bang Theory, and The Sing Off. Oh, and I can't get enough teal and grey in my life.