It's the Holiday Season.....the holiday season....

I love Christmas...I love holidays period, but Thanksgiving and Christmas are my favorite.

We went to my friends house down the road and enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast with their huge family. It was a lot of fun and oooooh, the fried turkey's! YUM! A baked turkey is beans in taste compared to an injected fried turkey...that's heaven, lol!

The same friend and I enjoyed Black Friday shopping with her sister and other family members the next morning-very early. Holy Moly it was crazy out there...We found all the best lines though and seemed to get in and out of stores very quickly compared to some. Just a hint, at Walmart wait until the crowd heads to the register's up front-and they all seem to gravitate that way, it's like a mass wave really, then stay in the electronics department and 5-6 min later you are walking out to your car. The 'underclothing' department in the department stores...another good place to checkout. And Kohl's. That place rocks. The lines were crazy long, but we waited only 6-7 minutes to get to a register. Not bad for Black Friday. I found a bunch of great deals on some things that I'd been wanting and needing. I finally got my crockpot-$13!

We got home and were exhausted. I took a bit of a nap and then went back out with my friend again to catch a movie called The Blind Side. A very good movie. I was so wore out! On Saturday I just wanted to do nothing and slept in quite late...surprising too since I rarely sleep in at all.

Now it's on to the Christmas holiday season!

Thanksgiving...

Some things we are thankful for this year:

• Our good health...well, that was before we got the colds...now we're thankful for cold medicines, echinacea, Ricola throat drops-you know you want to sing the name...go ahead! LOL. Prednisone shots that take care of the hives received from said cold medicines and someone to take care of you since you don't want to do anything while nursing said cold and hives!


• Our home


• Family


• All of our pets (thanks B)


• Swords and Nerf guns (thanks J)
  
• Hubby's job...the fact that he has a good one and that he's working on getting his bachelor's degree and will be finished soon!


• Our Church family and the gospel. For the peace that it brings into our life.


• My little brother who showed such patience during the holidays while all his nieces and nephews terrorized him!


• Working vehicles...though I wish it wasn't so much to fill the gas hogs up.


• Neighbors willing to watch this crazy farm when we leave and willing to doctor a sick goat and take care of a depressed 145lb Great Dane who is acting like a big baby because we left her behind at her own home for the holidays! Goofy dog...


• The free Christmas tree we got this year for helping out a family by finding and taking care of their dog when she'd run off.


• Finding those 'perfect' gifts for friends/family during the holiday.
  
• Kids that are thankful, grateful, who know how to listen to adults how to treat animals properly, how to be polite, and behave...that's a whoooole 'nother post in itself!

We headed to Georgia with J sick and came home with B and myself sick. J was fine after 3 days! We had taken Maggie beagle with us and she did great in the truck. Not a peep from her and she slept most of the way. She wouldn't ever use the restroom while we stopped, but there were no accidents so....

We had yummy food as always: turkey, sweet potato casserole, homemade mac & cheese, cornbread stuffing, cranberry sauce, waldorf salad, peas, whole green beans, rolls, mashed potatoes, gravy of course, and my favorite deviled eggs. I'm sure there were a few other things that I can't remember.

We met my sister's new boyfriend...he's very nice and definitely has more manners than she does...we all loved his little girl. She was just so sweet and well-mannered.

Maggie beagle and Rusty (my dad's dog) were too funny. Rusty was sooooo jealous of Mags being there and would bark and bark any time Dad would pet on her. It cracked us all up... well, except Mom! LOL.

J was baptized while we were there. He was so excited to be getting "Bath-tized" and that his cousins would be able to see it. Poor Steve had to hold him under the water a bit because J almost popped his toes out when he went under!

We headed home on Saturday morning and I was feeling like crud. We stopped on the way home a few times to see if any stores had the Nintendo Wii's ...we were casually looking for one for the kids for Christmas...no biggie if we didn't find one since I already had their shopping done and we both refuse to get caught up in the bidding wars on ebay for it. Parents get way overboard on stuff like that...it's silly really. We didn't find one, which we didn't think we would, but that's ok since a friend that works with hubby sold his to us...

Here's a few pics of the vacation:


Some of the ladies responsible for the reason we were all stuffed with so many goodies!