Christmas in January

Okay I know, this is a really late holiday post… but let’s just say we are busy. Who knew that taking time off of work and school would result in A WHOLE lot of playing catch-up (hmm… never noticed how much that phrase sounds like ketchup… weird). Anyways, Josh and I are back into the full swing of things and I finally have some time to write a little bit about our winter break. It seems the perfect time to blog is when I can't sleep and it is 1AM :)

So, we went across the country to a place that is much colder than our nice little Phoenix desert. Much colder was a nice change, but I think we are both happy to be home and warm :)

We got to hang out with Josh’s Uncle Jon, Aunt Dawn, and their wonderful kiddos. This means much fun and always includes playing cards, cooking AMAZING food, and having the luxury of lazing around a little. Here are some pictures to highlight this part of our trip:

Cooking!

We like to make new fun foods! Like these crab thingys lol

And these yummy fried toffee apples

We always make sure to find time to play cards!

Josh and the kids

Super sweet Tatum :)

Dawn!
Jon!

Taylor being crazy
They are perfect for each other :)
The whole fam
Their Christmas Eve morning tradition: Beautiful.

We also got to see Josh’s immediate family (mom, dad, brothers) who we do not get to see that often at all. It is so nice to just get to sit and catch up with them during this time, they always have the funniest stories to tell ☺

Matt

Josh's mom got a really cool brownie pan :)

Josh's dad was Santa

Then we got to have Christmas with both the Johnson and Farmer side of Josh’s family. Can I just say that Josh has a BIG family? I come from a mother who has three sisters who all have 2-3 kids and one of which is married (which means I guess my family is a little large on one side), and a father with one sister who has no kids. This means I have 2 sets of grandparents, 4 aunts, 1 uncle and 8 cousins total… This is the family I am used to.

Josh comes from a mom who has 2 brothers and 2 sisters (some married some not), who have from 0 – 4 kids each (and some of those kids even have kids!), and a dad who has 2 sisters and 3 brothers (some married some not), who have from 0 – 2 kids each. So, my husband has two sets of grandparents, 7 uncles, 7 aunts, 16 cousins, 3 first cousins once removed (I think that is what you call your cousins’ kids?), and even more that I haven’t met or can’t think of how to label…

Pardon me because I am sure that my math is going to be off somewhere in there, but you get the point: Josh’s family = big (almost 2 times mine) and/or my family = small. I love being part of a big family now, it is different and always full of lots of fun things and silly stories. However, it does make for a Christmas of moving around! This means that we got to have lots of Christmases. Here are some pictures:

This is what we got to see while we sat at a dead stop on the highway for over 45 mins on Christmas morning. I think we counted 9 cars that had crashed in our 1 hr drive (well is should have been 1 hr)... A white Christmas was so much more fun when I was younger.

Although we were pretty late, we did eventually make it to the Johnson family Christmas, and it was a lot of fun!

Then it was off to the Farmer Christmas!

Farmer siblings!

The whole gang

Wow guys, that was a lot of pictures huh? Sorry if I got carried away, it is just that Josh and I had sooo much fun, and we wanted to take lots of pictures to share our Christmas with everyone! Having a new camera that we love using helps too lol. Anyways, that was our holiday, we hope you all had a great one as well.

P.S. Stay tuned as Josh and I should be updating the blog soon with some pictures of our new guest room... fun fun :)

The most wonderful time of the year!

Christmas is over... so sad :(

But man did Josh and I have fun!

Christmas for us always means seeing and hanging out with family, which also means taking a trip across the country. This may sound long and dull, but by the time December comes around Josh and I are always ready for the nice long trip.

So just before Christmas Josh and I jumped on a plane to Nashville... actually, we are SUPER cheap, so we jumped on a plane to Las Vegas (note the fact that Las Vegas is in the opposite direction of Nashville when flying from Phoenix) sat in an airport for a few hours and THEN jumped on a plan to Nashville. After that we grabbed our bags that had safely followed us from Phoenix, and went to Bowling Green, Kentucky (AKA one of the best places ever!).

Bowling Green is the home of Josh's aunt, uncle, and their kids. We pretty much love these guys to death and look forward to spending time with them all year. We got there just in time to do some family photos and get to be a part of their Christmas eve morning. These kids LOVE to get their picture taken, which is fine by me and Josh since we have decided that photography is one of our favorite things! We are still working with a Missouri internet connection, so we will have to post some more pictures when we get back to a bigger city. :)

Crazy Taylor

Beautiful Tatum!

After that it was time for the six hour drive to Missouri. The road trip was fun and relaxing. The weather was pretty good so Josh and I just chatted and had fun the whole way.

Once we made it to Missouri we got to see more family! We spent Christmas morning with Josh's Johnson family. It is a family tradition for them to all have brunch together on Christmas morning. More specifically, they always make quiche. Even more specifically, they usually make quiche with ham. I always feel bad or rude when I don't eat what somebody makes (obviously) so, being a silly vegetarian, I usually take a piece and just eat around the meat (and it has always been yummy!). But this year they made me my own little vegetarian quiche! No meat at all. It was so nice of them, and it was really good too! I ate it all :)

After brunch we opened gifts, played games, and then made our way back over to the Farmer side of the family for more family, food, gifts, and fun times! I love spending time in Missouri and Kentucky. I don't know if everyone here is as nice as the family I married into or if I just got really lucky. I must say, that I have been immensely blessed with this new family of mine, not only did I get a great husband, but I now have a whole lot of other loving and kind people in my life as well. I love my new family!

Now, with this, I must add that I miss my side of the family for sure! Getting married and having family members spread all over the country makes holidays hard because you can't be with everyone. But to my Washington family (and Phoenix sisters): You were for sure in my thoughts this Christmas, and I hope your holiday was wonderful! Love you!

As for all of our friends in Phoenix, we can't wait to get back and see you all (and get out of this snow)! I hope you all had a great holiday as well! Pictures soon!

Thanksgiving... The end :)

Okay sports fans, it is about 10pm here in Phoenix. The weather has cooled back down to a brisk 65 degrees and Thanksgiving is coming to an end.

After dinner we all sat our full bodies down and watched the stop motion version of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. This is a holiday classic that many of us loved and others of us had never seen... but after all of that food, sitting down to watch a movie really just made us sleepy. So that could only mean one thing... time for pie obviously!

We had three yummy pies. Becca made a pumpkin pie and an apple pie, and I made a chocolate pie.


After pie it was time for Martinelli's sparkling apple cider (I LOVE this stuff!!!)

Then the realization set in that it was time to clean...

We split up the food and sent Becca, Bernie, and Bernie's friend home with as much ham as we could because goodness knows Josh can't eat 5lbs of ham on his own ;)

Then we packed up the leftovers and, most importantly, we packed up the dishwasher! We always used to do dishes by hand, but a mess like this definitely calls for a professional (not that Josh is not a pro at washing dishes :) )


Now, the kitchen is clean and Josh and I are sitting on our couch, bellies full, listening to the hum of the dishwasher. I would have to say that this Thanksgiving was a complete success!

We did miss many of our family members, but working on this blog really helped us feel like we were able to keep in touch! Thank you to everyone who followed us this Thanksgiving and to all of the wonderful people, near and far, that we got to spend this holiday with! We hope your Thanksgivings were as wonderful as ours!

Love,
Josh and Kelley

Dinner!

We had SOOOO much fun at Grammy and Grandfather's house!

We got home around 4:30 and rushed to get everything together. Then everyone got here and it was time to eat! He is how it all went:

First the Stuffing!
Here are the mushrooms.


Then add in the bread!

All ready to go in the oven!
Becca got me these cool slippers for my birthday!

Becca brought some brussel sprouts :)

She forgot the fruit salad she made and the grocery stores were closed, but Walgreens was open so we got the stuff to make some!

Bernie is so strong lol he opened the olives for us!

We had a lot of food!

Here is us eating...


And here is us full of food...


YYYuuuummmm! It was soooo good!

More pictures of the rest of the night later :)

More to come...

Okay mom, I know you are following this. Don't worry, we will be posting soon! We are eating FINALLY!!!!

Posts coming soon!

-Kelley

Farmer/Bates time!

We are now on to our first Thanksgiving of the day!

We are at Grammy and Grandfather's house with the Arizona Farmers and Beth (a wonderful new addition to the family)

Lots of yummy food and drinks and wonderful friends and family! We have missed spending time with all of these people, so this is great! Here are some pictures:

Yummy food by Jessica Farmer

Yummy Cheesy goodness!

The whole Gang (in two groups) with the Arizona sun in our faces.

Beautiful Beth

Cindi Lu

We love you Stephanie! Oh yes we do

Maddy
Abby Drinking the Dew

Jessica!

That's it for now! More to come later!

-Kelley

Thanksgiving with our Family (And anyone else who would like to follow along)

Thanksgiving = family

Always has, always will. Thanksgiving is a time when all of us are supposed to remember and think about everything we are thankful for. Often times, as is the case with us, we find that we are most thankful for the family God has given us.

Well Josh and I live about 1,500 miles away from our families (thankfully we do have some family here is Phoenix *Love you Farmers and Weiss sisters!). Some are in Washington state and some are in Missouri and Kentucky. Either way, they are not here with us in Phoenix, and around holidays like Thanksgiving is when we really start to miss them the most!

So we are 1,500 miles away from our families, so what! This is the age of technology, and distance is no problem for technology!

We decided that we are going to have Thanksgiving with our families right here on this blog! We are going to post pictures and short posts on what is going on during the day so that our families can share Thanksgiving with us! We love you guys and we hope you will leave comments on our posts and let us know how your Thanksgivings are going as well! We want to spend Thanksgiving with you, no matter how far away we all may be.


So here goes!

For those of you who are not used to late November in Arizona... this is what it looks like in our backyard right now! Yup, a freezing 74 degrees! Better put on a sweater!

Here is how the morning started off. Josh and I got up around 8:30 to start the cooking. First up: Ham!

This baby has been sitting in our fridge soaking up sugar water for the last few days. It better be good, Josh will have to tell you how it turns out since I don't eat meat :) We will be cooking it and pouring juice and sugar over it for about 7 hours :)

Next up: Stuffing!



MMMmm! I love this stuff! It takes a while because we have to toast the sourdough bread and make the veggie broth, but it is going to be worth it! Here is some of the toasted bread and the veggie broth cooking! yyuumm!


We ran into one little problem, the ham has to cook at 200 degrees and it takes 350 degrees to toast the bread... sooo toaster! Which made it a little darker than Josh would like... but I love dark toast!

Well that's it for now. Thanks for having Thanksgiving with us! We will be posting again soon, until then leave a comment and tell us how your Thanksgiving is going!

Love,
Josh and Kelley