Favorite Things

These are some of my favorite things from lately:

-- Eating out. We have a very conservative eating-out budget and usually get fast food once a month, and maybe go to a restaurant every other month (if that). But we had some extra eating-out funds and we were low on grocery budget after stocking up on diapers and making so many freezer meals so we've gone out to eat more frequently than usual this month. It's been so fun for us and I love not having to do the dishes. Among other things, we had a Restaurants.com coupon for a pizza place in West Valley that we've been hanging on to and so we finally decided to just bite the bullet and make the drive. (We had two of the coupons and used the first one to celebrate when we first found out that we were pregnant with Austin. It was so fun to go back there with our little boy and see how far we'd come. I kept feeling all emotional about the whole thing and enjoyed it SO very much.)

 --Good Friends. Seriously, we've been blessed with such wonderful friends and are so happy for the long time friends as well as the ones that we are just starting to get close to. Between the Halloween costume/murder mystery dinner we had with some friends, play dates, gmail chatting, texting, and yummy things dropped off at our door, we've felt so grateful for all the good friends we have.

(The Middleton's invited us over to paint pumpkins with them and we loved it! I think that Lydia and Henry are the sweetest little friends, and it makes me happy to see them sloooowwwly move from playing next to each other to actually interacting with each other.)

--These pictures of when I was working on sewing our Halloween capes. I would sew a bit, then come stand on the toilet so I could check the length or shoulders in the mirror. Lydia watched me do this several times and then she asked if she could put on her cape and look in the mirror with me. It was so sweet and these pictures just make me happy. (And remind me that she watches what I am doing all the time, so I better only do the things that I want her to want to do, too.)

 --Freezer Meals. We've been working our way through the freezer meals that we stocked up before Austin was born and I seriously love them! It's so amazing to just know what's for dinner and be able to pull it out and start it cooking in just minutes. It's definitely a favorite. Between the meals we stored and the meals from friends - we've made it through two months without any major dinner stress. It's definitely been a pressure reliever. (This freezer meal came from our friends, the Shields. So yummy!)

-Can you say "Caramel Apple Bar"? So. Good. This was the dessert at our Stake Primary Training meeting and it was amazing. Fresh cubed apples topped with chocolate, caramel, and yumminess galore. It was the perfect fall treat and I definitely see myself putting this together in the future. Again. So good.

(and the things I don't have pictures for...) 

--White Collar. David and I just finished marathon watching Season 5 on the USA website instead of waiting for it to come to Netflix. It was fabulous - but now we are torn as to whether we want to try to stay caught up with the new season or whether we want to wait for it so we can marathon watch it after it's all over. It's so fun to have something good to watch after the kids go down and we can relax together. We even had a bottle of Martinellis Sparkling Cider that we opened and toasted each other when we watched the last episode. It was so fun. 

--The Holidays! We already had Thanksgiving with my family and will have another Thanksgiving this week with David's family and I just love spending time with David and with our families and I'm giddy-excited about the whole thing. 

--I just bought some leggings and a couple of long sleeved workout-type shirts to wear as pajamas because sometimes it gets a little chilly waking up in the middle of the night. I love, love, love them. So comfy. I've been missing out! 

Also, these guys. 

I'm so lucky to have so many favorite things so abundant in my life.