Thanksgiving done, next stop, Christmas!

We're finally back to status quo here at the Beyer household after a fun family Thanksgiving. My mother-in-law arrived from New York last Wednesday afternoon, followed by my mom, dad and brother on Thursday just after lunch time. Six adults, four pies (2 pumpkin, 1 apple, 1 black raspberry), chocolate covered pretzels, snickerdoodles, pizzelles, homemade candy and biscotti, and a wealth of other edible yummies filled the house. (Why we felt the need to add a dozen Dunkin Donuts into the mix yesterday is beyond me!)

We were definitely in the Thanksgiving spirit here! Dominic even had a turkey shaved into the back of his head!


Francesca even helped me make the cranberry sauce on Wednesday before anyone got here.


Although I wish I could say that her happy demeanor lasted more than a few minutes at a time...


But no matter how grumpy one little girl likes to be, it's wonderful having the family here for any reason, and this is definitely an appropriate holiday for their visit. I am so thankful for my family, especially my mother as we have such a close bond. Having them here is so great, but I think it gets harder every time they leave. At least in this case, I know we'll be seeing them in three weeks when we drive to PA for Christmas. I can't wait for the craziness of Christmas Eve back home!

This past weekend was filled with shopping, eating, playing the Wii, more eating, more shopping, more Wii bowling and golf, and did I mention eating? I got pretty much all of my Christmas shopping finished - woohoo! Now comes the fun part - wrapping! We also put up the Christmas tree, took the kids' picture in front of it, and ordered our Christmas cards. I ordered them yesterday (Sunday) afternoon, then logged into my account at YorkPhoto.com this morning and saw that their status is "processed and shipped" already. Impressive! I guess I'd better get on the ball and get our labels updated and printed so we can get those bad boys in the mail asap once the mailman drops them off. Plus there are the rest of the Christmas decorations to get out of storage and put up, but I'll admit that I have a hard time mustering up the motivation to do that when we're going to be away for a week at Christmas. But Santa is still coming here - we have to leave him a note asking him to please bring our presents on Dec 31st instead of the 25th since we'll be in PA and don't want to have to cart them home from there. I'm sure he'll understand. ;)