Christmas!

We had a WONDERFUL Christmas! My parents and brother drove up from Florida Christmas day and stayed until Monday. We changed our tradition up a little bit and it turned out fabulous! See, for the past few years, I've cooked Christmas dinner (usually a Honeybaked ham!) on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas day for dinner we order Chinese food! Yummy! Well, this year, my parents were coming Christmas day, so I wanted to cook dinner for all of us. On Christmas Eve we went to our Church's service uptown and it was FABULOUS!! It was at the Belk Theater!!

Christmas morning Tyler woke us up by pulling on Eric's shirt saying "Daddy! Daddy! Santa came and Caiden is opening all the presents!!" So, Eric and I woke up (at 7AM) and had our Christmas. 12 minutes later, the gifts were open and paper was everywhere! LOL! It wasn't that quick.. hehe

We all go very nice things, Caiden getting a camera (because he LOVES to cheese like his mommy!) and Tyler got his Nintendo DS!!!! And he was super happy!!! Those were Santa gifts ;)

After we opened gifts and ate some yummy cinnamon rolls, Kate and I started preparing our Christmas feast! It was the VERY FIRST TIME I cooked a turkey BY MYSELF (with Kate of course!) I got all our recipes for the dinner on healthyrecipes.com. We made a shallot and apple stuffed turkey, roasted sweet potatoes, parsley and garlic roasted squash, apple and cranberry stuffing, and we can't forget the mashed potatoes and mac and cheese (the mac and cheese was made traditionally with all the butter and cheese!!) It was delicious!! My parents made it just in time for dinner and came with a WHOLE trunk load of gifts!! It was santa time all over again!!

Overall, we had a wonderful Christmas with friends and family!!!

Family Portraits

For Thanksgiving this year we went to Columbia (Gilbert), SC, to my Nana's (GiGi's) house! We got to see everyone! Including my cousins Cody, Dalton and Mason who I haven't seen in a few years. It's always nice seeing family! Nana cooked a delicious dinner, along with the help of all our family members who brought something! We had fun talking, playing games, drinking wine, we even did I Chinese gift exchange! Eric and I came home with some wine glasses, wine opener, wine tags, (that was one gift) and we also got the Mad Gab game... which is super fun! BUT our NEW favorite game to play now is the Game of Things! We played it for hours! Man I love my family! Happy Thanksgiving!

The day after Thanksgiving we went to the mall.... not to shop, but to get our pictures taken! Her are a few shots ;)

November Recap

November was a GREAT month! Eric had is BIG 20-10 (aka 30th) Birthday!!! I surprised him (along with many of his friends) with a Limo Wine Tour of the Yadkin Valley! It was AMAZING! The limo picked us up around 1030 on a Saturday morning and when we climbed in, the limo was filled with friends! We had a blast that day drinking champagne in the limo, laughing, singing, and tasting fabulous wines at 4 different wineries!!!! and for lunch, we had delicious gourment lunch boxes set up for us at one of the vineyards! We bought a bottle at each vineyard to take home. Our favorite one was Raylen Vineyards and Winery in Monksville, NC. Some others were Laural Grey and Ragapple Lassie. At Ragapple, we got to see how they made the wine which was a real treat!!

Overall, the birthday was a HUGE success! We wished EVERYONE could have joined us! We can't wait to go again one day!

Happy Birthday Babyface, I love you!

Here are some pictures from the wine tour!

Speed Camping

For our 2nd camping trip we went went to a couple campgrounds... Hiddenite and Lake Norman State Park and had a BLAST! Lots of fun memories were made... stories we'll tell for years and years to come!

This picture collage is at Lake Norman State Park. We went for a hike on the trails around the lake. The dogs were the first to arrive to the water (go figure) and jumped right in.... along with 6 other kids!! They all had a blast swimming and splashing around in the water on this beautiful October day!

This picture collage is when we had to move our tents because we had set up on a handicapped lot.... we didn't want to take down our tents (again) so we all grabbed a corner and walked to our next site!

This collage is mostley pictures from Hiddenite Campground... NEVER go there... it's terrible. We had TONS of fun at night though.. hay rides, home made haunted house.... but as far as the area/bathrooms, etc... it's not good..... ugh... but we made the best of it that night and packed up Saturday morning to go to Lake Norman! So worth it!!