Christmas is Coming!

After Thanksgiving and the infamous "Black Friday with the Family" experience this past weekend, the holidays are officially in full swing. We went down to Chattanooga this year to my Aunt Tina's house for Thanksgiving with the whole family. It was the first time Erin, my brother's girlfriend, had been to a big family holiday gathering at one of our houses. I hope she doesn't think we're too crazy after this weekend, although I will say we were rather tame in comparison to most years :) We had family photos made, courtesy of Image Photogrpahy by Matt Wolcott, for the first time in WAY too many years, at Chester Frost Park. The scenery there was great, despite the fact that I sat in some kind of animal excrement... But anyway, it was great to have the whole family together to document how much we've grown since the last real picture, and I can't wait to see how the photos turn out!

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving meal, with everyone crowding in the kitchen to help. Even Justin and my cousin Matt pulled their weight, whipping up some very tasty mashed potatoes. There's a story behind the potatoes... a few years ago, Justin and Matt saw my grandmother using a mixer to mix the potatoes to the perfect "mashed" consistency. The boys were insistant that these were not mashed potatoes, but "whipped" potatoes, and vowed that they would take care of the potatoes the next year. However, they didn't take the job too seriously, and every year since, they have been hijacking the potatoes and coming up with some weird concoction of ingredients that normally don't belong in potatoes and serving them to us with evil grins. It's gotten to the point where we are afraid to eat them, which is positively a downright shame, since who doesn't love mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving? This year though, they finally got their act together and made some really great mashed potatoes, which is one of the things we were all extremely thankful for!

The next day all the girls in the family went Black Friday shopping. In previous years, we did the whole getting up at 3am thing to hit all the stores with the doorbuster deals and we went through all the ads the day before and made lists of everything we needed to get. But lately it's just too much hassle, and there are always those crazy people camping out at midnight that get all the good stuff before you anyway, so we've been taking it easy recently. We left the house at about 8am and spent the morning at the big stores like Target and Academy Sports, then took a break for lunch at Fuji Steakhouse (best fried rice I've ever had, by the way), and then finished the day with an afternoon at Hamilton Place mall. It was a pretty good day, and I don't think we scared Erin too much :) Below is a picture of me and my cousins and Erin showing our holiday spirit in Target.

Snowflake, reindeer, snowflake, reindeer

Saturday, as any avid Vols fan would know, was the last regular season football game of the year. Tyson's family came into town and his brothers stayed with us Friday night so we could get up early and tailgate. We got to UTFCU on the strip at about 7am (in the 25˚ weather, no less...) and proceeded to build a fort out of our Tennessee tent and sleeping bags and blankets. Then we cranked up the generator and plugged in the kerosene heater and one electric heater and huddled together for a few hours until it was warm enough to venture outside. It was pretty hilarious, and I'm sure we looked ridiculous out there, but we had a blast at our last football game for nine months. Here are a few pictures of our makeshift fort:

  



The fake fire is a nice touch, don't you think?



The kerosene heater was a God send, although it kind of
looks like it's catching someone's leg on fire right now...



Erin and I got these awesome shirts in Chattanooga on Black Friday!

So now our fun weekend is over and it's back to work and the real world. We used Sunday to pack some more boxes and then we went to Home Depot and ordered the refrigerator for the new house. Thanks to our many family and friends who gave us Home Depot gift cards for our wedding, and the great sale they were having on major appliances, we got a fantastic deal on a big side by side fridge!

The house is coming along great too. Our closing date will be sometime between the 15th and 23rd of December, so we are officially moving in about three weeks. So crazy to think about! I turned in our 30-day written notice of our last day to our apartment complex yesterday, along with our last rent check EVER, and it was a very liberating feeling!

Here is the most current picture of the outside of the house:



This week is another full week, with a little Christmas shopping last night, dinner with my good friend Abbey tonight, our first knoxAchieves mentor meeting tomorrow night, a meeting with the DJ from our wedding on Thursday to do our post-interview, and MORE Christmas shopping this weekend. It's only going to get busier from here on out too, with a trip up to Ohio to visit my dad's side of the family next weekend, and hopefully moving in to the new house the weekend after that, and then Christmas, New Years, and our ski trip to Massanutten! I love the holidays, but man do they tire me out!

Thanks for sticking around to read this (if you made it this far), and I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season with your family too!