A lot of Thanksgiving and a little bit of Christmas

Well, happy belated Thanksgiving everyone. I made Turkey Barley soup for dinner tonight and it's supposed to be a great way to use leftover turkey, but with it being Monday now, leftovers are long gone in this house. (Actually the leftovers were actually at my in-laws house and I think they were gone the day after...)

Anyways, no matter the status of your leftovers and if you're over Thanksgiving already, well, sorry, I'm going to revisit ours for a moment.

We went Wednesday evening to Cincinnati to Rob's parent's house and stayed there until Saturday. The weekend was great - a good mix of doing stuff and staying home and playing games. Thursday we all pitched in and helped dinner come off as a great success with lots of family gathered around and great food. Friday morning we went and cut down our Christmas tree and then the womenfolk went to see Sandra Bullock's new movie Blindside which was a good movie and Sandra Bullock is great in it. I had some thoughts about it, but perhaps those will come up on another post. Rob and his dad went to a University of Cincinnati football game that afternoon and then we all were home in the evening playing games. Saturday we hung around doing various things and then went out to dinner to celebrate Bob's birthday. Here are some fun photos of the weekend.

A little family rivalry? Yes, I think so. Colts rule, Bengals drool. (Although the Colt in the background of this photo - look closely, yes, it's Kayla - is getting pummeled by a Bengal...)

Settlers is always a good time

Rob taking our tree out at it's neck

I saved it, although cutting it is a certain death for the tree. Sorry tree.

Family time at the Christmas tree farm

We did not intend to match....Rob was on his way to the UC game

The birthday cake Lori, Lauren and I made for Bob for his birthday.

But now, it's on to Christmas. Ah, the joyous season. I love this time of year - I really do. It always goes too fast though so I'm attempting to savor all parts of it. We started off our Christmas season with decorating our tree on Sunday during halftime of the Colts game. (Of course not during the game - how could we?! We were glued to the screen during that insanely strange and amazing game).

Later Sunday evening I put up some other decorations around the house. This is a side note, but for those of you who don't know, every year my mom changes her Christmas decorations decorating with gold and another color all throughout their house. Examples from past years: red and gold, blue and gold, black and gold, purple and gold, green and gold, etc. She's amazing at decorating - seriously their house looks like it came out of a magazine at Christmas. I'm attempting to take on her tradition starting last year decorating with pink and gold (super easy because it was our wedding colors) and this year with red and gold. Thankfully she sent me some pretty red dishes and balls so that helped in my decorating. I think it's a great idea because it makes every year different and yet similar and so beautiful. So here are my red and gold attempts...

First, our tree. We had to rearrange some furniture, but it fit! Thank goodness. It's looks much prettier in real life than in this photo and it still needs a topper but all the ones I've found I think are tacky.

This is a little far away, but you can see some of my decorations on our white bookshelf. I like the contrast and balance of everything.

Bring it on Christmas - I'm ready and waiting. :)