lazy dogs

Our 2 favorite things: two always-snoozin' dogs!

Lukey boy: Kowe Sue:

how does our garden grow?

Why, in a pot, of course! Here are two pictures of our new herb garden. Patty gave us all kinds of herbs from her garden and J potted them all into this one planter. We have curry, rosemary and oregano. He got rid of the parsley, but this is pretty neat, huh?!

Giving Thanks (version 2.0)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!! We've had a quiet and relaxing day and we've enjoyed it very much. Comfy pj's, no make-up (Josh takes forever putting on his makeup! heehee) and an entire day of cuddling with our pups was really wonderful. Here are some pictures from our day:

We started the day by watching the parade. I always get excited to watch and I get especially excited when the Mike Miller girls come on! It was exactly 10 years ago on Thanksgiving that I was in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade as one of the Mike Miller dancers, along with my best friend Jess and another friend, Kelly. New York City for three high school seniors...no parents and a big huge city with all of the sight-seeing coordinated for us was such an amazing experience! Seeing the parade every year reminds me of our trip and the freezing cold day that did the 2 1/2 mile march/dance in the parade and I love seeing the girls and remembering how much fun we had. (Coincidentally, last week I was out visiting Mamaw & Papaw and I got a big bag of some of my things that Mamaw found as they were doing a remodel. The bag contained my Macy's uniform and my warm ups. I certainly didn't try to fit into them but it was neat to see them again.)Okay, back from memory lane! After a pretty relaxing morning watching the parade, Josh started cooking. Here he is tending to the turkey (which, by the way, turned out aaahhhh-maaazingly well! soo moist!):

omg, yummm! sweet potatoes and turkey!:J pouring his beloved Thanksgiving turnips:

Lukey hung out hiding from the broom and the vacuum whenever possible:

J carving the turkey:

My mom came over for lunch and she filled up on Josh's delicious cooking, too!:

Eat up!:

Me and my sweet, gorgeous hubby! (bearded and all...)

Kowe Sue always finds out who will be handing out scraps!

After eating, we all relaxed on the couch for a bit and then ate some dessert. After that, we all crashed and took a nap, even my mom! Here's a picture of the dogs...they were tuckered out!!

Our day was long, restful, food-filled and wonderful! We did miss our families (besides mom), but we were thankful to be at home with our dogs. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, we thought we would give thanks like we did last year.

• As always, we are most thankful for our happy home. We are blessed to have a strong marriage and we have been through some very difficult things this year...things that tend to drive many couples apart. Thankfully, we have only been driven closer through all that we've endured. That's certainly not to say that things are all roses and butterflies, all of the time, but things are really very good, which is more than we can hope for!
• Our babies are second on the list because they complete our sweet little family. They bring joy to us that I'm sure no one else understands, but they have carried us through a lot of those tough times that I mentioned before. (Lukey is *the* most compassionate dog and he knows how to cuddle you at just the right times when you're feeling down. He's very intuitive and seems to be highly empathetic. I have cried on Lukey's shoulder more times that I care to admit! For that, I am very thankful.) Yes, we have had our fair share of bites, fights and barking fits, but we wouldn't trade those two mop-heads for the world.
• Family is a given. Being close to family is such a blessing and we appreciate all of the time that we are able to spend with them. Personally, I am beyond thankful for the strength and support of my sister. She is the only person (aside from Josh) that I know I don't have to pretend with. She gets me better than anyone. I am also incredibly thanful for the best in-laws that a girl could ever ask for. I say that a lot, but it is really true...and unusual, unfortunately. I wish more people were able to experience the kind of in-laws that I have.
• We're thankful for our abundance of nephews! They offer lots of entertainment, that is for sure. Nothing makes you feel better than when those little boys light up at the sight of you. They melt our hearts every day.
• Along that same line, we are not only thankful for Alex's healthy and safe arrival, but also for the joy that he has brought to everyone, especially his proud daddy. We can't wait to watch him grow and his picture updates are a highlight of our week!
• We are thankful for friends, both new and old. We have gained some wonderful friends this year and continue to be thankful for the friends that we have had all along. Good friends are hard to come by and we're lucky to have the ones that we do!
• In looking back over the past year, we realize how very lucky we are to have been able to see new places and experience new things.
• I am so thankful to still love my job. It's still my dream job and I work with a group of wonderful ladies, which makes things even better.
• Pretty much, it comes down to the people in our lives that we're thankful for. Things are pretty good in the Wright household these days!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

christmas is all around us...

We officially kicked off the holiday season last week by pulling out all of our Christmas totes and putting up the trees (yes, we have two Christmas trees). In keeping with tradition, we also watched Love Actually (which is where the title of the post comes from...Josh will tell you that I was singing that song for days after we watched it!). It is one of my alltime favorite movies and I don't feel like it's time for the holidays until I've seen it.

Here are a couple of pictures of our festive decor. You'll see some in the Thanksgiving pics, too.

Notice Kowe's long tongue out. She's a kisser!

J getting us organized!

best.job.ever.

Last week, we had a Boiler Mixer at the Indiana State Museum. Boiler mixers are essentially alumni get-togethers hosted by the College that I work for and the office that I work in plans them from start to finish. They always turn out to be great fun. We had one at Cooper's Hawk Winery & Restaurant earlier this summer (which was aaahhhh-mazing!). Anyway, back to the one this week...the museum is hosting Chocolate: The Exhibition, which is a traveling exhibit that has been all over the country and even to Paris. You can imagine that, as a staff of 7 women, we got rather excited at the thought of an event centered around CHOCOLATE! Here are a few pictures from the event...I ran out of time and didn't get any pictures of the actual exhibit, which was actually really fascinating, but I snapped a few pictures before people started arriving.

I love the watermelon with the Purdue logo. The presentation was beautiful all around...and it tasted even better than it looked!

I had to snap a picture of Wendi driving what we deemed the "party bus!" She drove the van (aka BUS) that even beeped when we reversed. We had three of our student Ambassadors with us and I also got a cute picture of them, but I'm not posting that one. Finally, here is a picture of me that is a replay of some funny pictures that we took at state fair. See, I attended my first EVER state fair back in August (the last time I was at the state fair was when my mom went the day before she had me!). Since I had missed out on all that fair food, I vowed to EAT my way through the fair! And that, I did...corn on the cob, real ice cream, corn dogs, cheese fries, deep fried candybars, you name it!! (Granted, we were there for like 14 hours, so I had plenty of time to spread my food out, but I was quite proud of my fair food marathon!) Anyway, we took lots of great pictures of me as I ate my way through the day. Unfortunately, I think I lost all of the pictures when our computer crashed. I don't believe I ever posted them. So here is a picture that Wendi posted on her blog of me double-fisting it! Coffee and chocolate all at once!

This was all on Monday night and then on Tuesday, I went back to Indy with some fellow Development Officers to a dinner where our Vice President won the Fundraising Executive of the Year award. It was a pretty great week!! I have the BEST.JOB.EVER!

Tomorrow is the final home football game against IU. We're playing for last in the Big 10. Something to be proud of. Luckily, basketball season is upon us and things are looking good in that arena. As a side note, we tried to get some tickets to the Purdue-Duke basketball game that Dick Vitale will attend. Josh thought it would be great fun and then when I started asking around, I found that tickets were going for as much as $1000 each!! Needless to say, if we see that game, it will be from the comfort of our couch. Tomorrow, we are going to start our Christmas decorating! Then we're excited for Thanksgiving dinner at home with our pups. More updates this week!

more PU football

After a late night (and realizing how old we all are), we were up bright and early the next morning for some tailgating. Well...let me rephrase that! SOME OF US were up bright and early. We had a delicious breakfast and waited for the sun to come up. It was nice and cold! Some played corn hole.
Here are 2 of the late bloomers. We'll just say that Shell had a reaaallllly good night the night before. She deserves it, though. She never lets loose and she's always busy taking care of everyone else. And, I have to say that she looks really great for the condition she was in!

I loved this!! Jeff's truck has a cooler in the bed of it, so we filled it with ice and put our drinks in there. So convenient!

Here are all the girls (Sara, Laura, me, Jenny, Shell):

And the guys (Josh, Eric, Danny, Brian, Jeff):

And here is Shell posing with the gifts she left us the night before: Shell and Danny at the game:
Me and Josh at the game:
Jenny, Shell, me:
Shell taking a little rest:
Me and Danny at the game:

We had a great time! And the best part was a Boilermaker WIN! (Finally!!!)

the doggies on halloween

On Halloween, before going out, we handed out candy to the neighborhood kids and the dogs loved barking at all of the visitors.

This year, Lukey was a Purdue football player. So naturally, Kowe was an IU cheerleader. We're pretty sure that if Lukey was playing for Purdue, Kowe would be rooting for IU on most occasions.
Tonight, we bought next year's outfits for $1 on the 90% off rack at Target. They'r hilarious. Stay tuned next halloween!!

halloween fun

Here are lots of pictures from our night out for Halloween. We went to the Cactus with several other couples and it was hilarious. There were so many funny costumes and it was a riot just sitting and watching people.

Josh was a lumberjack...very fitting with his big beard. (Note, he was being silly with his ears here. He looks like a cute little Dopey.)I was Ugly Betty. This is my impersonation of Betty when she's lost and looking off into space...Here are Jeff and Laura: Josh and Danny (who didn't dress up....big party pooper)

Shell and Danny:

Josh and me again:
Shell being a mean witch, me being lost Ugly Betty
Laura, Shell, me, Abby:Josh and Jeff:

Eric pulling the thong of the fat lady behind him:Here's a funny picture of Jenny dancing with the big Bugs Bunny character. I don't know who he was but a lot of people seem to remember him. Bugs Bunny is also in the picture and Luigi is almost walking through the pic. (We only know Jenny. She's the funniest thing when she's dancing.)And this was my alltime favorite costume. They were all the Deadliest Catch. There are those red guys in the background are the crab cages. The boat lit up and honked and the guys danced around the dance floor all night. Pretty clever.