Goodbye Thanksgiving, Hello Christmas...

This past week was full of its ups and downs.  Of course, we were thrilled to see family and friends for the Thanksgiving holiday.  As usual, we spent Thanksgiving lunch with my mom's side of the family.  They are from Montgomery, and Thanksgiving is the only holiday we usually get to spend much time with them.  That meal is always huge and really good.  Afterwards, my sister and I cuddled in the lazy boy and discussed our Black Friday plans to get up early to seek out some good deals.  That is something we always used to do before Auburn and Alabama started playing on Black Friday.  This is the first year in several years that the game has been moved back to Saturday. 

My cousin, Corey, who is a sophomore at Auburn, had a job last year working with the football team.  He brought his championship ring for us to see...Chris was very excited to wear it, but as you can see, it didn't quite fit.  That is the closest I have been to one, so it was pretty cool to get to see it in person.

Something that I find very exciting, as a result as my perpetual greater-than-necessary interest in other peoples' lives, is that one of my best friends and one of Chris' best friends have united together in boyfriend/girlfriend status! Hooray! I love new opportunities for double dating.  And what better time than Thanksgiving? Lauren and Jordan joined us for Thanksgiving dinner at (Pops) Chris' and Lisa's house. Here is a picture of the happy new couple with nephew, Mason, asleep in his Auburn jersey.

Lauren took care of Mason while we were on our honeymoon.  He wrote her a thank-you note afterward to show his appreciation of her patience with him...despite the fact that he was not quite crate-trained or potty-trained when she kept him, she still loves him to death!

Black Friday was a pretty successful shopping day.  My sister and I didn't buy many presents, but we did buy a bunch of stuff for ourselves!  I kind of feel that the stores have ruined Black Friday by changing it to Black Thanksgiving Day Night.  Sorry, but I'm not interested in waiting in line at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Kohls or anywhere else on Thanksgiving night.  Apparently that's when all the steals were this year.  Don't get me wrong, there was still some good stuff left over, but all the really great deals were gone. I was happy to get the Nike running shorts that I wear to work out in on half price...I NEVER find them on sale, not even online.  So that in itself was worth it.  I got a pair for myself, and my sis got me two for Christmas.  I also found us some light up deer for our front yard for cheap at Big Lots (the ones I really want, I hope to get on sale after Christmas at Lowes).  Also on Friday, Aunt Bette was kind enough to let us use a gift certificate she had received from Wares to get a couple of Christmas serving plates.  I hope to find a night where we can have a Christmas party (with a crowd like the Thanksgiving feast) and we can use all of our pretty Christmas plates and serving dishes. 

One thing that I had been looking so much forward to was having a girls night on Friday night.  Girls nights are pretty few and far between these days, since everyone has relocated and has boyfriends/husbands.  It's easy to get together as a group, but usually we have the guys with us.  Friday night the guys went their separate way to brew beer with Greg while we went out for dinner.  Then we met up with them later (along with Tammy) for some karaoke fun at a restaurant/bar in Auburn.  I had to prepare Tammy for the fact that, although I love karaoke and am not stage-shy at ALL, that doesn't mean I'm as talented as say, my sister.  In fact, saying that I am talented at all is probably a stretch.  The only talent I have is at being shameless and choosing songs that people like enough to sing along to and ignore my voice.  We all sang some karaoke, and I even sang Summer Nights with the guy running the show.  Chris always gets a kick out of it, but he won't sing with me.  I think he just needs some extra encouragment, don't you?

Chris' favorite for me to sing, "Any Man of Mine" by Shania Twain ;-)

Singing "Friends in Low Places", which became an instant classic at our wedding.

Friends are your best backup singers...in my case, that saying is quite literal.  I have friends who are VERY passionate about backing me up!

Saturday was great up until about 2:30 pm.  As expected, our beloved Auburn Tigers didn't quite pull off the miracle we had hoped, and we were beat pretty bad by Alabama.  I hate losing to Alabama more than anything.  At least the tailgating was good.  We had a fun tailgate with Lauren's parents, and a lot of people were able to come....here are a couple of pictures. 

Girls picture! I always get excited about seeing Tori since she moved to Atlanta and I don't see her as much as my Auburn friends.  The little "bunny ears" belong to Lauren's nephew.

While we were walking to the game, Chris made friends with this little girls puppy.  He literally laid down on the groud and let it run all over him.  I guess he is still just a little kid inside :)

I don't think Mason would be very happy if he saw this!

As you can see, the blog is now "decorated" for Christmas.  I had hoped to post some pictures of the Christmas decorations in our house by now...unfortunately, in the fiasco of our Uhaul being too small back in July, we left pretty much all of our Christmas decorations back in Auburn.  We didn't realize this until we got home Sunday night to put them up.  I have been in a total funk ever since.  Decorating for the holidays is a hobby I take very seriously.  No kidding.  I was going to try to work in Birmingham today because Tammy had offered to bring them up for me.  Then I faced communication issues at work and never got approved to go.  Then I thought about shipping them.  I don't know how much that would be, but it would probably be expensive.  Luckily, today I got instructions from work that I will be working in Birmingham tomorrow and Friday...my dad just so happens to be working in Birmingham Friday, so it will all work out. He's going to bring them up for me.  I can spend the weekend decorating and have my pictures up next week! Crisis averted.  I know all that drama probably seems silly to some, but just know that when something tries to come between me and decorating for Christmas...things get serious!

This weekend, we have plans to decorate, take a picture for our Christmas card (once the tree is finished), and do some actual Christmas shopping (for other people...not just ourselves haha). The most exciting thing is that Chris is going up in the plane of one of the pilots he met at work.  He hopes this will prepare him (i.e. his motion sickness) for IFS starting in about a month. I really hope it does! I know that was hard for him to overcome when he flew at the Academy...but he did overcome it (with the help of his special combination of gatoratade and PB&J) and wound up being the first person in the whole class to solo (fly alone).

Check back Monday or Tuesday for my Christmas pics! So ready to have the house decorated! :)