Thanksgiving 2012

Holiday haze has started already. It probably started sometime back in October honestly. I don't if it's my age or the age of my kids or what, but it gets worse every year. Wasn't Halloween  like a week ago? And Christmas shopping....you mean it's time for that?

Slow down world. I'm afraid I might fall off.

After Thanksgiving, we lept full force into Christmas decorating and grabbing online deals for gifts. Clark Griswold Jeremy was a little under the weather after pouring all his blood, sweat and tears into our turkey...so we didn't finish Christma-tizing the house last weekend. Meaning there are boxes everywhere and we are swimming in a sea of decor.

And suddenly I remembered that just a week ago today we were furiously baking pies and getting ready for Turkey Day, and I had still yet to post pictures here on the blog!

It's not my fault. It's the haze.

It was a beautiful day. 60 degrees or more, which is crazy warm for us. Since it was so nice, I forced the little guys outside a bit.

We stole the football from our neighbors (well technically they left it in our yard and we played with it) and Charley liked it so much, I'm thinking it's high time we get one.

Look at the old man go. He still has moves.

Since we had a nice small crowd, we all fit into the dining room (with the help of the extra card table).  I had used more dried hydrangeas to make centerpieces and napkin holders. Probably one of the easier (and cheaper!) crafts ever!

You can't see it, but Tessa and Charley had their own little table in the corner.

Tessa's grabbing herself some hot cider from the drink, snack and pie table. She decided to forgo the cinnamon whiskey addition. By the way, did you know that diet coke mixed with cinnamon whiskey is surprisingly delicious? I think it got named 'the red headed step child'.

Charley made a fast friend in my cousin Joel. 

This is Whitney, new addition to our holiday gathering.

I was thinking about holidays and how if I look back on the last 10 years, the profile of our family is literally different EVERY holiday.....marriages, deaths, births, moving away, divorce, more births, moving back, more births. It's perpetually changing. And I suppose that's the nature of life and age. And yet we continue to gather and have a good time and love each other because we're family. So this year was different, just like every year before it and every year to come. And the world keeps on turning and the family keeps on cookin'.

Deep thoughts by Laura.

Jeremy and his beautiful turkey.


On Black Friday, we did what we try to do every year and got as far away from malls as possible. Literally. The little town of Metamora has a lot of cute little shops where you can find Christmas pretties at good prices and things like homemade fudge.

And there's not even 4G. It's awesome.

I'd rather be in this kind of store than a mall.


Mom tried to snap a good pic of us for our Christmas card but we kinda failed. None of them were very good. We might have to go back to the drawing board.