My Favorite Time of Year

We had a fun Thanksgiving this year, it is so much more fun now that we have kids, I love sharing holidays with them! I kicked off Black Friday a little early by going to the drugstore and getting several things (including a pair of headphones!) for completely FREE!! What a great start to the day! Then my best friend Renee came over to help me cook. A couple from our church invited us and a few other people over for Thanksgiving dinner. I was in charge of making the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. I had never made a green bean casserole before, but I just followed the normal recipe and it turned out great (it may have helped that I doubled the amount of french fried onions on top!). I also made the Barefoot Contessa's parmesan smashed potatoes. They're to die for, I make them every few months. I would make them more often but they're not exactly healthy or low-fat, so I limit myself.

Anyways, together Renee and I made the potatoes and green beans. Brandon watched the boys and got them dressed. Then we packed everything up and headed out. The boys took a nap as soon as we got there but they woke up about halfway through dinner. We had brought along their high chairs so they were able to eat with us and, man, did they LOVE the Thanksgiving food! Jack especially, he was smacking his lips and making noises the entire time he was eating. They both ate turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and bread. Later, they got to try some pumpkin pie too. I think that might have been one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I was sitting on the couch eating some pie. They were standing up and holding onto my knees, so I gave them each a taste to see if they'd like it and after that they wouldn't leave my side. They were practically hyperventilating between bites and kept bouncing up and down yelling for more. Everybody in the room was laughing at my little beggars! We had a great dinner and enjoyed spending Thanksgiving with friends from church. If you can't be with your family, I think that's the next best place to be!

We couldn't stay very late because the boys had to get to bed, but we squeezed in a quick skype call with each of our families before bedtime. During the call, all 4 of us worked off the majority of the calories we'd consumed earlier. The boys did it by frantically crawling and flinging themselves toward the laptop trying to touch it and Brandon and I by trying to restrain them from doing this. They ripped a key off once before (luckily it just snapped back on) but now they're determined to tear apart the entire keyboard and slobber all over the screen. They don't give up either!

On Friday, I woke up early and hit up some Black Friday sales. I will think twice about this next year though because I realized you can't just 'sort-of' shop Black Friday. Either you're up at 4 am breaking down the doors with the crazies or you might as well just not go until Friday night or Saturday. I got to Target at 6:30 am and it was already cleaned out. I wasn't expecting to get any of the 'doorbuster' deals of course, but I was hoping to get just a few things at a good price. There wasn't much by the time I got there, though. I ended up leaving with 2 $3 movies and 3 cheap tank tops for myself. I overheard a woman ask one of the employees about the $3 appliances and he laughed in her face and told her those were gone within 3 minutes of the store opening. I also tried to hit up Walmart but ended up leaving with nothing at all. They had set up a police barricade with no less than 6 police cars inside. I had to walk around the back of the store to enter the 'line' (which was empty at that point but I still had to walk through it to get to the entrance of the store). Once inside, I really only wanted some half price pajamas for the boys. But those were gone of course and it was so crowded that I didn't bother looking for anything else.

Renee met me at the outlet mall where we had much more luck... and fun! I bought a ton of cute clothes for the boys at the Children's Place (which I'm convinced is hands-down the cheapest place to get new kids clothes. I regularly get shirts there for $0.99 and pants for $5 or less.) I also got some cute belts and tights for myself at Banana Republic where the entire store was 50% off. And I bought a skirt and sweater at H & M. Is it bad that I got more for myself than anybody else?

On Friday night, we drove out to a farm about 30 minutes away and bought a Christmas tree. We only got a small one because we'll be gone for most of December but I really wanted to get a tree for the boys' first Christmas. Here we are with our cute little tree. It was freezing that night and very windy, poor Jack and Cullen didn't know what to think. It was definitely the coldest it's been all year, it was the first time they'd even had to wear their jackets.

We turned on some Christmas music and decorated our tree. Jack was fascinated with the lights and kept trying to eat them.
Here's the tree all decorated. Miraculously, neither the cats nor the boys have broken any ornaments or knocked the tree over yet. The past 2 years, our cats have just absolutely destroyed our tree. This year, they're mostly leaving it alone and I'm soooo glad! Maybe Brandon's stern discipline last year has paid off!


And here are some other funny pictures from the weekend. Cullen found a brownie that was inside a sealed Ziploc bag in my purse. He somehow opened it and ate some of the brownie before I realized what he was doing. He was pretty pleased with himself.

And here are our little beggars back in action :-)

Jack took the movies out of the shopping bags for me. I guess he wanted to watch Elf?