happy thanksgiving and a giveaway

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!

-Psalm 107:1

We have so much to be thankful for this year!!

We just celebrated our one year anniversary in October. We have family close by. We are healthy. We have jobs. We have a home. And we have a wonderful church family.

But most importantly we have a Savior that died on a cross to save us from our sins.

We are most thankful for this.

Another silly thing I am thankful for is this cookbook.

About a year ago, my Mom and my Grandma (Nonnie) combined all of our favorite recipes into one cookbook. They made it as a fundraiser for the school named after my PaPaw.

I don't know what I would do without this cookbook. I literally cook from this cookbook almost every night. Most of the meals that are on my "Meal Planning Monday" come from here. They are all easy recipes that don't take any crazy ingredients and they are easy to read and understand.

There are no pictures in this cookbook, but just trust me, they are truly tried and true recipes. I don't think there is a bad recipe in the whole cookbook.

This cookbook gets the most use at The Link Home from Thanksgiving until Christmas. All of my favorite holiday recipes are in this cookbook.

So since this time of year is all about giving, I just thought I would give away one of these cookbooks.

There are LOTS of chances to enter this giveaway so please read the directions carefully to maximize your chances to win. Also, be sure to leave a separate comment for each entry.

I will pick one winner at random on Monday, November 30th.

{You must be a follower of my blog to enter this giveaway. So if you aren't, just scroll down and look on the left for the tab that looks like this...

....and click on Follow. You'll have to follow a couple of steps to become a follower.}

For the first entry, Just let me know that you are a follower!!

For extra entries:

** Tell me your favorite holiday recipe.

**Write a post about this giveaway on your blog and link back to me.

**Write about this giveaway in your facebook status.

**Tweet about this giveaway on Twitter!

And as a special bonus, if you do 3 of the extra entries, you may come back and enter once per day!!

And don't forget--leave a separate comment for each entry! You have until Monday to enter. Good luck!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

i love weddings

Sunday night one of the sweet girls that I work with got married. It was such a fun wedding. They had great food, an awesome DJ, a photo booth, delicious cake, and candy buffet!! The wedding was just absolutely beautiful.

I brought my camera but unfortunately didn't take too many pictures.

Here is our Kindergarten team. I sure do love these gals!!

And here's my hot date.

I just love going to weddings!!

Congrats Sarah & Matt!

**On a side note: I'm super jealous of Matt & Sarah. They are going to The Royal Hideaway in Playa del Carmen this week for their honeymoon. (It's where Matt and I went for our honeymoon.)

meal planning monday

Monday: Chicken Poppyseed Casserole. Broccoli, & Rolls

Tuesday: Chicken Cordon Bleu, Rice, & Veggies

Wednesday: Spaghetti & Meatsauce, Salad, & Garlic Toast

Thursday: Thanksgiving

Friday: Thanksgiving Leftovers

Saturday Breakfast: Breakfast Casserole

Saturday Lunch: Sandwiches & Chips

Saturday Dinner: Baylor Game @ Cowboy Stadium

Sunday Lunch: Last Sunday Lunch w/ our ABF

Sunday Dinner: Crab Triangles & Soup

thanksgiving & christmas

Who says you can't celebrate both at the same time??

I was trying so hard to wait until after Thanksgiving to put up my tree and all of my Christmas decoration. I just couldn't do it. Matt got all our decorations out of the attic last night and I put up the tree!! I'll post pictures after Thanksgiving when it's "legal" to have all of your Christmas decorations out!!

kickboxing or a butt kicking

Turbo Kick is the greatest kickboxing class ever. I love it!! I used to go every Sunday and Thursday pretty consistently, but it's been a while since I've been.

I woke up early this morning, so I decided to go to Turbo Kick at the gym and get my lazy butt back into workout mode. I'm seriously either hot or cold when it comes to working out. I always workout 4-5 times a week for like a month, then I don't workout at all for month. I am determined that this month I make it one of those months where I work out 4-5 times a week. I refuse to pack on the dreaded holiday pounds.

It felt great to workout today. I always feel so refreshed after a good workout. The only problem about this workout was that there was definitely more butt kicking than kickboxing!! I'll be heading back to the gym tomorrow hoping it will be less of a butt kicking!!

stars game

We went to the Stars Game last night with another ABF at our church.

You can see by the score that it wasn't that great of a game.

But the score didn't matter to me, because there were 4 fights in the 1st period alone. That is definitely my favorite part of the game!!

My least favorite part though is how stinking cold it is at the game. At least this time I came prepared with my "eskimo coat."

is it really that great?

It's 30 minutes away from opening night of New Moon and I'm going to sleep. You couldn't pay me to go see a movie at midnight.

I know quite a few people who are at the theater seeing the movie right now. I just don't get it. Is it really that great? I read the first chapter of the first book, and just could not get into it. I saw the first movie and thought it was good, but going to see a midnight showing on a work night. Is it really worth it? I think I'll just wait until I can get it on Netflix.

I just don't really get the whole Twilight addiction.

string cheese

Matt and I have this new obsession with string cheese. I randomly bought it at the grocery store a while back, and now we just can't get enough of it.

And neither can our dog.

I have never been able to give Izzie doggie treats. Ever since she was a puppy she always got an upset tummy after I gave a treat. We have also never given her people food. I never wanted to get started with that bad habit. I have always just given her ice cubes as a treat and she loves it. The other day I decided to give her a teeny tiny bite of my string cheese just to see if she would eat it.

Not a good idea. She LOVES it!!

Now she begs us for a bite of string cheese every time we eat one. Sometimes I'll quietly go in another room to open my string cheese because she can hear and recognize the sound of us opening string cheese.

Atleast Izzie likes healthy snacks, right??