So Thankful!

Get comfy! This is going to be a long one! :)

I am thankful for almost a full week of time with Trav and our friends! He had Wed.-Fri. off of dental school, so the fun began Wednesday with an afternoon of bowling.

(Creed likes to get close and comfortable. I like that Collin is looking at him like, "Whataya doing so close to my dad!":)

The Shaws and Carters...

the babies...Doug and I have mad skills. I blew everyone away with scores ranging in the 50's and 60's. I was born to bowl.

Da girls.

(and Collin)I was itchin' to watch some FRIENDS Thanksgiving episodes, so that night the Shaws came over to enjoy some with us. We also warmed up our stomachs for the next day by gorging on donuts and eggnog. I can't decide if the football episode or the Brad Pitt one is my favorite, but by far we most like to quote Brad saying, "YAMS!!". Never gets old.

The Marchants hosted us for Thanksgiving along with the Shaws, Shaheens, and Megan's brother's family. I made yams and scalloped pineapple. Sounds gross, I know, but ask anyone there, it's artery-clogging good!

Then later that night we got together at our house for some pie. I think Rachel wins for best looking and Megan and Crescent's tie for best tasting. I made a pecan pie which didn't look too great but ended up tasting pretty good. I also made a chocolate cream pie that turned out terrible!! It looked disgusting and tasted even worse. It won the trash award.

That night I also decided Collin was in need of another hair cut, so I chopped along his mohawk and used the clippers on the sides and back. Then Trav suggested using the clippers on the top to even it out and lo and behold a level 4 guard is a lot shorter than I thought! Goodbye mohawk! I was actually really heartbroken. I liked his do. *tear* I guess hair grows. I'll get over it. Eventually :)

The shorn locks.

I'm not proud of what I'm going to share next. Sadly, I took part in the Black Friday madness. :) My mom is not a "shopper" and never, ever, NEVER would go out on Black Friday. Thus, neither did I. Until this year. I saw a piano keyboard on sale at Target for 50% off, making it $50. To say I play the piano is a stretch, but I have taken lessons and know that if I practiced- HARD- I could plunk out a few hymns. We have no piano players in YW and have gone acapella for quite a while, so I thought it would be good for me to brush up. Target opened at 5am. I wasn't going to be crazy, so I set my alarm for 4:30am. I went to bed at 10pm and spent the next several hours either waking up to check my clock, or dreaming about being lost in a Target, looking for a keyboard. By 4:12am I had awoken for the last time and got dressed to head out. When I arrived, the line had already extended across the front of the mini-mall, and down the side of the building. After I got in line, it continued around to the back of the store and went all the way back. This is what it looked like behind me. At 5am, we started moving. By 5:04, I was in. I squeezed past the already thick crowd by the electronics, wiggling to the back shelf where the keyboards were. My $50, 61 key Casio was gone. It looked like there had only been room for one on the shelf. By 5:07 I had left the building. What was I thinking?

I was consoled later that day by buying myself an early Christmas present. Ta Da! It was $50 off, so not a smokin' deal, but still a bit on sale. I busted it out and marveled at its beautifulness :) It's like a Cadillac compared to what I was using before. The grand daddy of sewing machines. To me anyway. I can't wait to start all my projects!

That night we went out to dinner with the Shaw's and Finlinsons then went back to our place to play games. The boys creamed us playing Cranium. At one point, Jacob leaned forward and then seized up in pain. I guess he has a herniated disk that acts up sometimes. He managed to get on the floor and here's Doug trying out his own version of therapy- wiggling his legs back and forth. Poor guy was in so much pain, but we couldn't help but laugh as Dr. Shaw tried out his {magic} touch.

Saturday night, the Cardon's invited us over to make gingerbread houses. It was a lot of fun, but we won't be changing our careers to architects. We had a pretty shabby looking gingerbread {village}. So I just started throwing candy all over it. Candy makes everything better, right?! We also had some of Tiff's amazing hot chocolate and Creed favored us with some eggnog, including Rice Dream's version of eggnog. Funny thing, it tasted just like horchata. Seriously, go out and try it. Not bad.

Our masterpiece.

Collin had woken up that morning with a runny nose and not feeling too great, so we called it a night kind of early. Luckily, it's not a bad cold at all and on the plus side, he's had a few snuggly moments.

So, besides the usual things to be thankful for (i.e family, the church, etc) I am grateful for Skype (we got to chat with both families this weekend), my YW leaders growing up (I'm finally realizing how much work they put into their callings!), Hobby Lobby (I honestly don't know how many times I've been there the past few weeks), NO SNOW YET(this hasn't happened in 60 + years in Buffalo), and a new nephew (but I don't have any pics of little Rusty since his momma has deprived us! Hint hint :) Most of all, I'm grateful for commercial airliners that will be taking me to see my new nephew and family in just a couple of weeks!!!