our first "alone" thanksgiving

thanksgiving 2012 in the barfuss household was simply perfect.
i have a picture overload below but how grateful we are for good friends to spend the day with.
we weren't able to travel for the break but didn't feel sad or alone.
plus it gave nicole and i a  good excuse to practice our thanksgiving making skills
all i can say....bring on thanksgiving 2013...we're experts now!

i will be honest and say i was terrified to make a turkey. i may have called my mom every 30 mins with a new freak out. we had one scary moment when i thought the dang bird wasn't cooking but luckily a little turn up of the temp solved the problem.

my cute mom made this banner. i loved having it up!

our first thanksgiving in chicago

look at their cute little family!

we look slightly crazy..maybe because we are about to eat ourselves silly in pie. side note: i was so tempted to shove this pie in the mr.'s face.

dan proved his worth and made two incredible pies! yum...i'm still thinking about his pumpkin pie

dan even shaved chocolate chips on top! 

my first attempt at "our best bites" banana cream pie. it was a bit runny but oh so good!

our set up. it might not look like much but this was so much food for just the four of us! ahh we ate so much goodness!

i couldn't get over how good it looked all together! man i want to go back and repeat the meal

our little table. i wanted to do a thanksgiving themed table but after walking around the stores for a couple of hours i realized it wasn't worth teh money. maybe in 10 years when we're out of school...haha. for now we made due with our spring set up..haha!

i would like you to meet mr. turkey. BAM!!!! check that baby out!

sure perfection right there. yes i was excited!

cute nicole. oh man what would i do without her! i loved us both...so new to making a thanksgiving dinner. at times we'd both look at each other and laugh because we didn't know what do to next. 

  and the boys...this is what they did most of the day. mix in a little football and call it a day!

we spent the rest of the night relaxing, playing games and just enjoying being together. so grateful for dan and nicole and little lincoln for being our chicago family!

hope ya'll had a great thanksgiving as well!

the mr. and mrs. thanksgiving trip

finally the san fran pictures!
after driving through the night we finally made it to san fran. needless to say i was tired but it was go go go.
our first stop was alcatraz.

here we are in front of one of the rooms.
alcatraz was cool to see but i never want to go back. no happiness in that building and those listening tours were a little creepy.

(don't mind the mr.'s long hair. i fixed it right up on sunday when we got home.
no more gross long hair!)

sarah, spence and i with san fran as our incredible back ground.

so these aren't really in order but....
we spent black friday shopping in one of the best shopping towns ever.

 three beautiful stories of my favorite store. i was so happy to just walk around this fun place. who couldn't love a huge nordstroms.
black friday was crazy.
it took spence and i one hour to get from our hotel to the cheesecake factory, which were a block and a half away from each other. yep there were that many people.
needless to say we ate somewhere else.

 this one is for you mj:
the "full house" house. i think i was the only one on the trip overly excited to see this place but my cute family stopped anyways. it was as great as i expected. hey who could blame me, i grew up with the tanner family!

 pier 39. one of my favorite places in san fran. and it was all decorated for christmas so bonus. we ate soup bowls, shopped, laughed and took pictures.
there is anyways a ton of fun and activities at the pier and we enjoyed it all!

the family on the cable car.
not as exciting as one would think.
but hey we were in san fran, we had to ride it right?

one day we went to the california museum of sciences. it was a really cool place and we have a blast in the aquarium part. i even got to touch a star fish and i talked the man into turning him on his back so we could feel what the inside of a star fish feels like (it's pretty cool).

this picture isn't that great but you get the idea of how much fun we were having. seriously aquariums are so cool.

spence thought i took too many pictures of fish. and maybe i did. but who can blame me, they are so stinkin cute. this was one of my favorites though now looking at the picture it doesn't look as cool...oh well1

just some candy store that i fell in love with.
san fran was never lacking in fun stores!

my cute little brother in law. he kept me laughing the whole trip. it was fun to be with the whole family.

we tried to get a picture of us on our first thanksgiving being married.
most are a lot worse than this.
spence wasn't in the mood for a normal picture.
he kept me laughing.
so this was the outcome.

thanks to my amazing in laws for a great thanksgiving break. the trip was a blast. you were so giving. it was so kind of you to take us newlyweds with you (and feed us incredible food, and get us our own room).  we missed the rest of our family though!

one of my favorite family vacations for sure!

i sure love san fan.