Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! My mom was able to come from Montana, which made us all happy! (thanks for coming Mom!!) It was just the seven of us for dinner. When we lived in Montana we were near lots of family so to just have the seven of us seemed really small. The girls made sure we didn't miss the crowd by being loud enough for a small army!!
Brian smoked the turkey and it turned out to be scrumptious!! Now that we know Brian can't have gluten, he can't have the traditional pumpkin pie, so he found a yummy pumpkin ice cream dessert. You use vanilla ice cream for the "crust," and a filling similar to regular pumkin pie with whipped cream, and freeze it. It was so good we didn't even miss the traditional pie!!
I talked my mom into braving the craziness of Black Friday. We left the house at 4:20 am, of course. We had to stop off at Starbucks for some hot chocolate to get us going. (well I had hot chocolate and mom had some fancy coffee) Then we hit Shopko and Walmart. It wasn't that bad! Last year I ran into some rude people that for some reason were upset at the lines - lines are just a part of the craziness,duhh! We were back home by 9:30 am. Then mom watched the girls and Brian and I hit a few more stores. There were some awesome deals out there!! We were home just in time for nap time!
That night we put up the Christmas tree and got the lights on. Mom is a light freak so there has to be tons of lights on the tree. Half of our lights weren't working, so she went out and bought us all new ones. Now we have a beautiful brightly lit Christmas tree. Saturday we put the ornaments on it. Every year the girls get new ornaments from Grandma Karin (my mom)and us. As each ornament is pulled out of the box it seems to hold a memory for someone. I love the excitement and the glow on each of the girls faces as they hang their special ornaments! (Poor Amber only has two!)
Now I just have to decorate the rest of the house and put all the boxes away. Fun fun!! I love Christmas!!!