Coming up for air

I have received several phone calls from my cute friends and family wondering if I was still alive. Well, I am...just barely. I've missed my blogging world and will try to catch up on everyone's new posts this week. I haven't even allowed myself to turn on the computer most days because I know that hours would be sucked out of my day without having accomplished anything! We haven't done too many exciting things, but have just been extremely busy with all the little things in life.

Brendan is paying the price for overdoing it last week. He put up lights on our house and then he put up our 12 foot christmas tree and put lights on that.

He got up early on Thanksgiving Day to go play in our ward's Turkey Bowl which is really the Smith Boys vs. the Biggs Boys (all in good fun though). He single handedly cooked and basted two turkeys for thanksgiving (up and down our basement stairs all morning).

He came with me for the 2nd leg of my Black Friday shopping extravaganza in the afternoon.........and now his knee is swollen like he just had surgery! He's had it wrapped and on ice for the last few days and he says it's feeling a little better. I'm crossing my fingers because a 6th knee surgery is not what we want for Christmas. He loves projects and I love that he works so hard on everything, but that was a lot to do on a bad knee over a weekend.

What have I been up to? Oh, just mainly driving and more driving. I am SO HAPPY that gas prices are down. I never thought we'd see prices under $2 again! I also just wrapped up my busy season for bows so I spent many hours surrounded by ribbon and hot glue, but I was able to catch up on all my DVR'd shows. I got up at 6 am to try to get a few deals on Black Friday. I just couldn't bring myself to go at 4 am when many stores opened so I didn't get everything on my list but it was still fun. I usually don’t buy much all year, but I go crazy at Christmas time. Once my head stops spinning with sale prices and comes back to earth, I usually sort through my piles and return a lot of it. That way I can sleep on it for a few days and make sure what it is that I really want to keep vs. what the sales said I had to have. I AM IN LOVE with the new Smith's Marketplace that just opened up by our house. I have stocked up on the many grocery sales they've had. Great produce prices and quality and they have cute clothes and shoes for Allison's age.

We had Thanksgiving at our house with Brendan's family and my brother Ed's family. I think we ended up with 14 adults and 11 kids! We had a big table in the family room in addition to our kitchen table. Everyone brought something so that made it much easier. I’m bummed I forgot to take pictures of the cute peanut butter acorns that Jake made. We got the recipe from Studio 5 and all the kids loved them. Everything turned out great!

It was so cute to see Jake be the Pied Piper in the backyard with all the little boys playing football.

Allison led the little girls (the boys joined in later) in a fun game of hide n seek for hours. All the big boys (over 13) went to see the new James Bond movie. Our boys gave it a thumbs down. The girls stayed home to clean up, watch the little kids and chat. I think next year it will be our turn to go out! We all really had fun hanging out and everything was delish! My “thankful for” list will have to wait for another post since I just can’t wrap my brain around serious stuff right now. So much more to write…so little time. I’ll try to catch up later this week and I promise to check out everyone else’s blogs and get in a few comments. Love to all my blogging pals!