Thanksgiving and a weekend re-cap! :)

Well, it is back to the grind today. Let me tell you that my body is not with it. I so wanted to sleep in this morning! I am thankful for the break Thanksgiving provided and thankful that I have a job though, so there will be no complaining here!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and 4 day weekend! It all got kicked off when we found a box on our porch late Wednesday night. I was not expecting anything, so I was totally surprised. All I can say is that I am incredibly blessed with some great friends. I am very thankful for the friendships that have survived me moving to Indiana and still continue to grow. Well, the box was from my friend Vickie. A true friend! She was planning on joining us for Thanksgiving but plans were cancelled due to flight schedules and costs. Since she couldn't be with us she said she wanted to send "a piece of Florida" to Indiana. That girl touches my heart!

Here is the package:

And the contents of the package:

Yep, those are Pilgrim Mickey and Minnie salt & pepper shakers to add to my collection. I LOVE them. Really, I think I squealed and danced when I opened the box. Stephen will vouch for this!

Thanksgiving morning we were up around 9am to watch the Macy's parade in our PJs. We also prepared the things we were taking to the family Thanksgiving dinner: mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. Yummo! We ate at Stephen's parents house and had way.too.much.food-as always! For some people their favorite thing about Thanksgiving is probably the food, or the turkey. Not for me. My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is family coming together AND spending hours looking over the sales ads. I love it!

After feasting on the traditional Thanksgiving dinner; cranberry sauce, stuffing, turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, rolls, green bean and corn casserole...and spending much of the afternoon browsing the sales ads, we made our way home. I had to change quickly and pack a bag for our Black Friday shopping trip. Us girls pulled out around 9pm and headed to the outlet mall! We had made a hotel reservation...well, I had made a hotel reservation incorrectly so it was not actually close to the mall. We decided to head to the mall instead of first checking in at the hotel. In the end, it all worked out! We shopped until we dropped. Literally. We left the mall and decided to skip the hotel and just head back home at some hour early in the morning. Seriously. The sun was coming up. It was daylight and sunny when I made it home. I was pretty exhausted after shopping all night, so I took a shower and then a 4 hour nap. It was lovely!

Shopping at the outlet was not bad at all. I think maybe it is calmer there because their are no outrageous electronic sales or anything. Regardless, I like it and I think we all had a great time! Most of the things I purchased have been wrapped by my Santa (read: Stephen), so I will have to wait until after Christmas to share them with you! The other things I purchased (for other people) have already been wrapped too. Just trust me when I say that everything was a good deal!

After my nap we decided to take Louie to the vet. He had his last heart worm treatment on Wednesday and had been having trouble keeping his meals down. I was worried about him and he just was not acting himself....so to the vet we went. They could not pinpoint what was wrong, but they did give him a shot that seemed to help very much. He has been on the mend since Friday and has been keeping his food down. We actually had to run to Wal-Mart to buy baby food for the pup since he was on a white rice and baby food diet all weekend. We are slowly adding in his regular kibble and hoping for the best! I just hate it when he is sick and hurting!

After the trip to the vet, we left him at home to sleep while we scouted out our perfect Christmas tree. We snapped some pictures in the back yard on our way out:

My eyes were just too tired and dry from wearing my contacts all night, so I resorted to my glasses for this shopping trip. My eyes are still a little irritated from this weekend actually...so glad I have these glasses as a backup!

The above coat, friends is my new peacoat. Thank you Old Navy Black Friday sales! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it and got the best deal. It was on sale for $29, but the store was an additional 15% off and I had a coupon that I won for having a picture of Louie in my phone while I was in line the check out. That meant my coat was $20!!! Score! It was quite entertaining in this line-there was an employee asking for things in order for people to earn coupons. For example, my sister in law got a coupon for not having on white socks and some other girls near us got coupons for singing their favorite Christmas Carol. See what I mean? Fun and entertaining!

We went to 2 Christmas tree farms looking for trees and found this one:

I had my heart set on a Frasier Fir, but ended up not getting a Fir at all. Apparently they are very expensive around these parts! We tagged the above tree because we liked it...just didn't love it. I thought that we could find a better looking one, and we did!

While we were tree shopping we got to see the prettiest sun set I have seen in awhile:

Isn't it beautiful? Seeing something like this, I just can't understand people who say there is not a God!

At the end of the night we ended up with a tree! We settled on a Spruce Pine Tree and I must say...I LOVE it! It was pretty fun trying to make it fit in the back of my car...which is small, but bigger than Stephen's. We had to put the back seats down and push it through the trunk. The trunk still would not close! Guess it was a good thing I had rope and bungee cords in the car that I had purchased last week for Stephen's stocking! They came in handy!

Getting it out at home was easier than getting it in the car...maybe because I knew no one was looking at me so I didn't care how crazy we looked? Who knows! Here it is:

Louie was excited...okay, maybe not. But, he was feeling better!

On Saturday we put the tree in the stand and got to work decorating:

The tree's new home (until Jan) is in our dining room bay window. I love the way it looks inside and from outside at night. Plus I just really love having 2 Christmas trees...it may have always been a dream of mine!

Sunday we went to church and then spent the day being lazy at home. In my opinion, it was wonderful! I think Stephen might have gotten a little bored at points but it's okay. We don't have lazy days like that very often. We watched several Christmas movies...so many that we only have one left to watch. I sure hope "Santa" brings some more Christmas movies!

How about you-how was your Thanksgiving?

Did you join the crazy people in Black Friday Shopping?

Whoa-just realized how long this post was. Bravo if you made it to the end!