Gobble Gobble...HoHo

I love love love this time of year. My two favorite holidays are almost back to back. We had a great time on Thanksgiving day. It started early...I mean EARLY. Mary and my parents were here around 6:30am to get the 21lb bird in the oven. That is a lot of stinkin turkey people. Since we added John Bingle to the family several years ago we have started stuffing our turkey with his mom's stuffing recipe. It came out of the oven 5.5 hours later looking like something from a magazine. We were joined this year by my parents, my sister Mary and her family, my cousin Cammy and her son, my Father-in-law and his wife Barbara and her daughter Melissa and granddaughter Kendyl. If I counted correctly that is 14 people. I think we had food for 40 though. There was lots of eating and football watching...and then a lot of cleaning. How come really good meals have to make such a mess? I haven't mastered completely the clean as you go concept. One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving is that when it is over and it is officially time to decorate for Christmas.

The year we got married Kyle and I started a family tradition of driving the 1.5 hours to Sparta, NC (aka the mountains) to cut our own tree. You should really try it one year. The place we go takes you on a hayride up the mountain. You choose your tree and then they cut it for you. You get back on the tractor to ride back down the mountain. When you get back there is hot cider and snacks. It was beautiful and cold. This year Andrews favorite part was the tractor. Nothing else really came close. Our friends the Campbell's joined us. Our tree is outside waiting for decorations. I am little nervous about bringing it in because I just know Andrew is going to want to play with the ornaments and lights.

I have our Christmas cards ready to go out and am looking forward to having some friends over in a couple of weeks to do some Christmas cooking. I trying to think of some other traditions to start with Andrew now that he is a little older...any ideas?