Ah, the holidays!

It always seems to me that once October hits and Halloween is in full swing, the remainder of the year goes by extremely fast. And there isn't ever anything I can do to stop it, or at least make it slow down a little. So I just try to enjoy it as much as I can. For Thanksgiving James and I went to his parent's house where we spent a fun filled day hanging out with the family and enjoying each others company. It was truly a great day. James was so excited because he couldn't wait to play football with his family.

See, every Thanksgiving (and really every holiday for that matter) James' family gets together and plays a ton of sports in the morning. James has been so busy with school and work and church that he (and I as well) have not been able to visit the family as often as we would have liked. Normally, James goes over and hangs out with them on Tuesdays because that's his day off. However, he has been so busy that he hasn't done that for a while. You can imagine how excited he was on Thanksgiving morning when the alarm clock went off and he bounded out of bed ready to go to his parents house. Now, I am not a morning person, so suffice it to say that I was completely ready to sleep for another hour or two. James could not wait, and began to run (literally) around the house saying how we had to get ready to go because football started around 9:30 am.

Well, we got there a little after 9:30 but no one was there to play football. We ended up going over to the church where James' dad, two brothers, and two sisters were waiting for us so we could join them in some sports. They had already played a game of basketball, and were just setting up the net to play volleyball by the time we got there. After the volleyball game, James, his dad, and his two brothers and I traveled over to a local park so they could play football. Well, they played football...I played my Game Boy. :) Anyway, they played for about 30 minutes and then we went over to his parent's house where we were greeted with the wonderful smell of turkey. I love the smells of a good Thanksgiving dinner cooking. We watched a movie and had snacks and then got ready for dinner. The turkey was delicious, stuffing was amazing, rolls, fruit salad, broccoli, gravy...it was all delicious. Then we all cleaned up and played a game.

That's one of the things I love about James' family. They all love to play games so I feel in my element at those moments. People in my family (aside from my older sister) don't really like playing games, but I really do. We played Cranium and had a fun time trying to act, hum, draw, and think of answers. After that we all had pie. Now, you have never had pie like the pie my mother-in-law makes. It is amazing. She made chocolate raspberry, lemon, chocolate cream, cherry, and banana cream pie, and it is a fight every time she pulls one of them out of the fridge. They are some seriously good pies. My favorites are banana cream and lemon. There is no second...they both tie for first place.

After that we decided to play one of James' little brother in air hockey. That kid dominated every single one of us, and even succeeded in hitting the hockey puck off the table and flying across the room at least seven times. It was crazy how fast that little guy was going. And whenever I finally had a chance to smash the puck across the table, I kept missing it! It was fun though. We finally headed home at the end of the day. It was truly fun to visit with family and friends and have such wonderful company on a holiday meant for giving thanks. And we get to do it all over again on Christmas Eve! I can't wait!

I'm here, I promise.

Yes, I am still alive.

No, nothing new has happened, but thanks for checking in.