Far More Than Rubies: Happy Thanksmas!

Since we are splitting our holidays between sides of the family this year, we are spending Thanksgiving with my family in Nashville and Christmas with Ian's in Orlando. We wanted to be able to do Christmas with my parents as well though, so we combined the holidays into one jam packed, fun filled, holiday weekend called Thanksmas!

My sister and brother-in-law arrived Wednesday afternoon and all the ladies sat down and made a game plan for turkey day. Thursday morning, Thanksgiving day, meant cooking began! It was actually a pretty easy morning. With three capable women in the kitchen we were able to divide and conquer, all while the men entertained the girls upstairs.

Turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, corn casserole, sweet potato suffle, rolls, and cranberry sauce were on the menu, with sweet potato, chocolate pecan, and apple pie as desserts!

Thanksgiving night we headed out to find a new tree farm (their old one shut down,) and picked out the perfect tree. The farm had the cutest little barn area set up to get out of the cold. There were lights, hot chocolate, hay bales, and coloring books to take home!

We took the tree home, dragged out the decorations, and set it up! While we were decorating I set up my camera on the tripod and used my remote to capture all sorts of moments and I just love the pictures that caught the spirit of the night!

When Grace and Ian went to put the angel up on the tree we had the most unfortunate (and hilarious) event...

The angel's head came off and was impaled by the tree!! Several days later she was repaired and all was okay.

The next day, my sister and Grace decorated a gingerbread house. Really, Heather decorated the house and Grace licked all of the decorations. In the end, both were pleased with the results.

Christmas eve my dad read the Nativity story to the girls and then they opened up their Christmas pajamas.

Christmas morning, the girls woke up rather late, around 7, and we got right down to business, opening stockings and then presents. We let the girls open all of their presents first, then laid Sophia down for her nap while the adults took a much more leisurely pace with our gifts. My parents made us a pancake breakfast after that and we enjoyed a nice Christmas brunch, bacon and all.

I took the girls outside to do their Christmas pictures. It wasn't much of a success. I'm not used to this early sunset business, so I tried doing it before their nap which meant we were out in the noon day sun (stupid, I know,) I got a few cute shots but they aren't my favorite. I'm also working my way through a glitchy camera (sand in the body, perhaps,) and an overwhelmingly large number of photos from our time in the States. I'm pretty sure I need to just choose my favorite 10 photos from each event and then DELETE the rest so that I don't have to keep sifting through them. I shot 600 pictures in our Thanksmas weekend. Crazy!

Saturday we watched football, baked, and went to see some local light displays. We ended the night with a game of Five Crowns. Sunday we went to church together and then to a Hibachi grill. Turns out, both of my girls are terrified of fire, so that was not a hit. They did love the chicken though. You know, once the terrified screaming and petrified shaking came to an end.

We came home from church and my sister and brother in law packed up and hit the road. It was a sad goodbye to the girls' Aunt Heather and Uncle Ryan. Hopefully we can see them over on the other side of the ocean soon!