Thanksgiving Highlights

We had a perfectly lovely Thanksgiving weekend. Some highlights include:

1. Fellowshipping over shrimp stew at the Dawsons' on Wednesday night.

2. Wiley Dawson. He is a highlight in and of himself. First, he's showing Kristen how he can "textes". And then he's schooling Lee on his special blended bourbon.

3. Thanksgiving morning: Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, delicious turkey lunch, dog show, look through sales papers. It's the same routine every year, and that makes it perfect.

4. Annual picking out of the Christmas trees.

5. This after-lunch conversation:

Ann: "You know, Christmas sweaters are back in style this year."

My mom, indignant: "They were never out of style!"

Everyone: Pause. Followed by lots of laughter.

6. Kinston making national news for pepper spraying crazies at Wal-mart on Black Friday Thursday.

7. Four photoshoots including senior pictures, cheerleading pictures and two family Christmas card shoots.

8. Dinner and Black Friday evening shopping (it's the way to go, after the loonies have cleared out) with my favorite 20-month old and her not-my-favorite squeaky shoes.

9. Beautiful farm sunsets.

10. Spending quality time with our Tampa pals, even Sugar. These are two tired pups after spending all night catching up.

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Ambrose the Turkey

Our cousins have a pet turkey (for now, let's just pretend that's a normal statement).

And apparently, he only responds to a strong, authoritative tone.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Sugar's Favorite Ornament

So we put up our tree this weekend. Let me just say that I'm normally opposed to decorating before Thanksgiving weekend but Lee forced me. So we currently have a fall pumpkins out and our Christmas tree up. Whatever.

Anyway, we have this fluffy feather ornament we hang on our tree and Sugar's always been a bit obsessed with it. When I pulled it out of the box this year she went nuts. By the time I pulled my phone out, she was more interested in the phone at first than the ornament but you get the drift:

I made sure to hang it low on the tree where she can get to it. She likes to go up and nuzzle it every now and then. I think she wants it to be her friend.

Either that, or she wants to pluck it and eat it.

Tampa Birthday Surprise

Chrissy and Mike moved to Tampa this summer and we've been talking about getting down there to visit them ever since.

It started with a conversation between Sara and I on when we could visit and turned into "would it be crazy if we flew down for Chrissy's birthday and tried to surprise her?" Mike loved the idea and we convinced Steph to join us as well (with her flying in from Charlotte).

Mike managed to keep our secret (it was easy for Sara, Steph and I since we only talk to Chrissy every few weeks, but Mike had to live with the secret for two months!) and although she knew Mike had something up his sleeve I think she was truly surprised.

We flew in Friday morning and Mike picked us up at the airport while Chrissy was at work. We hit up the grocery store for some snacks, birthday cake ingredients and booze and then set to work making their living room a bit festive.

(Notice Ali in her banana Halloween costume):

Steph preparing the cake:

When Chrissy walked in, Sara greeted her as Steph and I hid in the kitchen. Lots of screaming and hugging ensued.

I came out next and stood behind Chrissy while she was talking to Sara and overcoming her shock. I finally had to tap her on the shoulder, and she whirled around and the screaming started all over again.

We all chatted a bit and then took her over to look at her cake, where Steph was hiding behind the counter. It's safe to say she officially lost it at this point. It took us all a good 10 minutes to stop shaking, we were so wound up. I've never done anything quite like that before and it was so exciting! The anticipation, the planning and then actually pulling it off -- pure awesomeness.

We popped some bubbly, devoured some homemade guac and cheese and crackers and spent the afternoon catching up.

Then we got ready for dinner and hit up Ella's, an awesome restaurant Chrissy and Mike have found that was absolutely delicious and had a really fun atmosphere.

Before dinner:

And a silly shot:

Saturday was spent exploring Tampa, seeing Chrissy's hospital and the beautiful Davis Islands:

Then mimosas and yummy salads at Cafe Dufrain on the waterfront:

Followed by wings and nachos at PJ Dolan's while watching the UNC/NSCU football game.

The game didn't go our way but birthday shots made it better!

And finally, grilling out at Chrissy and Mike's (yes, we ate about ten different times on Saturday), a rousing game of Cranium and birthday cake.

It was an awesome weekend full of talking, eating, drinking, exploring, more talking and enjoying the gorgeous weather of the Sunshine State. I so enjoyed being able to spend the weekend gabbing with my girls and can't wait to do it again.

Thanks Mike for helping us pull it off (and for being a devoted blog reader!) and Chrissy for being such a good host and allowing us to crash your birthday. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

P.S. - I've changed the commenting system on the blog, so hopefully it will be easier for you to leave me some bloggy love. I know it was a bit confusing before if you didn't have a Google account, but now you should be able to sign in using Twitter, Facebook or just put in your email address and name. Try it out and let me know what you think. If it still sucks, I'll change it up again. Because y'all, comments really make my skirt fly up.

Maia & Kelli

Wendy wanted to get a picture of her girls for their Christmas cards this year, so we did some quick shots after church last Sunday.

It was chilly and windy but the girls were troopers and I think we got some good shots. I'm not going to post the winning picture so I don't spoil it for those receiving a card but here are some other pics from our shoot.

Keiley

She might not have any front teeth, but girlfriend knows how to strike a pose.