Thanksgiving

I know, I know.....you thought I fell off the face of the earth. Or at least forgot all about you. I didn't. It has just been so crazy busy these last few weeks that blogging doesn't get done.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving week. Chuck & Nancy arrived on the Sunday before. Lacey was thrilled to see them again and Leah warmed up pretty quickly. Leah can say something that resembles Poppy or PaPa (for Chuck and my dad), but can't do Grandma, so she has taken to calling Nancy "Nana". It will be interesting to see if it sticks.

Tuesday (I think), I took the day off and Nancy & I went shopping. I wanted to get something new to wear for our portrait session on Wednesday. On Wednesday, our appointment for pictures was at 4:00. I thought this was a great time because we could get pictures done, then head to eat at Red Robin while waiting for them to print them. It didn't go that way. We were called back at 5:00. As you can imagine, Leah was not very cooperative after having to hang out for an hour. I had learned from another customer that they wait to even view your pictures was 30 minutes. So....the store agreed to hold the digital pictures for us to view on Friday morning. We headed to Red Robin for dinner, but Leah (and Lacey) weren't exactly thrilled to be eating out and confined.

Thanksgiving was at Dee's house. I had hunted down Butterscotch Brickle from Tastefully Simple and brought that as an appetizer (with apples). Yum-o! We had a very good linner (lunch/dinner) of stuffed ham, fried turkey, oven roasted turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli casserole, green bean casserole, corn pudding, mandarin orange salad, and rolls. So good. Even though I ate small amounts of everything, I was still stuffed. The whole reason for linner (at 3:00ish) is so we can let it digest and be able to eat dessert without bursting. We had a choice of 4 pies. Mmmmmmm.

Oh - I almost forgot - Dee burned her hand pretty badly while preparing food. She was planning to put a casserole dish on the stove top to warm a bit and checked to make sure the burner was off. She touched the burner and it was still on. Not the best thing to do. I do it all the time, but wow....she had a bad burn for a few days.

Friday, Butch & I headed out early with the girls to go see the pictures that were taken on Wednesday. We were amazed to see that there were several good ones.
This was an "okay" family picture, but not the best. The better one is on the Christmas card, so I'm not posting it here. :-)And, since Chuck & Nancy were in town, we thought we should get some with all of us.

That night, we headed to "The Square" in Leonardtown (about 30 min. south of us) for the tree lighting. It was nice, but we didn't last for the actual tree lighting. It was much colder than we'd realized and I was worried about the kids. Plus, we'd already seen everything and the lighting was still about an hour away.

After getting home, we got Leah to bed. Then, Butch & I headed out to meet some friends for drinks. We ended up back at their house and playing a drinking game of Uno.....not realizing how late it was. (I blame Butch. :-)) I had told him when we got to M and C's that we needed to keep an eye on the clock and not stay long. Nancy was sort of waiting up for us - to make sure that Brady didn't bark when we got home. Well....we got home around 2:30. And, I was super hungover the next day. So bad. Ouch. I think I got so excited to have a night out (they are so rare) that I lost control. So, Saturday, was spent resting. I felt much better after napping when Lacey & Leah napped.

Saturday night, "the girls" (Nancy, Dee, Kristina, Jessica, Georgia and I) took Lacey to see Beauty & the Beast at the Port Tobacco Players in La Plata. It was really, really good! I don't think I've mentioned to any of those that went -- I found out that the guy who played Lumiere is a senior in high school. He was the best! Lacey managed to stay awake for the entire show (until 10:40) and she really liked it. Afterwards, "Belle" was up on stage taking pictures with kids and surprisingly, Lacey went to her. I was shocked.
Oh - I forgot to mention that Lacey wore her Belle dress to the show. Many people commented on it.

Lacey was really wound up when we got home. I think she finally fell asleep around 12:20.

On Sunday, we got out the tree and Christmas decorations. In the afternoon, Lacey, Leah & I went to a birthday party for a 3 year old from their daycare. It was tea party & so cute!

Whew. I'm surprised I remembered all of that!