Turkey Weekend 2011

How was your Thanksgiving? Ours was a bit of a whirlwind but wonderful all the same. Kyle and I started out at my parent's house, where we did Thanksgiving lunch with my mom's side of the family.

For the table settings, my mom kept it simple and functional. She did paper plates on top of the gold chargers and also used paper napkins, which meant less time cleaning and more time with the fam!

For the centerpieces, my mom wrapped a garland of leaves and plumes around a cute funkin. This centerpiece has made an appearance at many Thanksgivings and works beautifully every time.

While I was running around taking pictures of the tables, I ran into this cutie. He wasn't too thankful, though, that we just set up a big table on the comfy rug he had claimed as his nap spot for the day. Sorry buddy!

After we had our fill of turkey and dressing, there was the inevitable family photo shoot. Even though it's not everyone's favorite thing to do, it is fun to look back at Thanksgivings past and see how our family has grown and changed throughout the years. Here is my immediate family:

Cousins Ali, Grace, Caroline and me.
Ali and me. :)
My Aunt Carol, my Mom, and Aunt Catherine.
Our friends from church, Stephen and Mallery, got to join us as well. Mallery only had Thanksgiving Day off from work, and seeing as they are from Iowa, they could not make it up there and back in a reasonable amount of time. So we offered for them to join us and they got to be part of our family for a day!

This is my extended family on my Mom's side, only missing my cousin Creagh and her new husband Chris (and baby Bennett who is on the way!).
The Jones family, looking sharp! And congrats goes out to my cousin Caroline, who just found out about her acceptance to UGA. Our family bleeds that red and black!
Before we knew it, it was time to travel over the river and through the woods to Thanksgiving dinner #2! This was with my dad's side of the family, and as you can see it is pretty large as well. Even a year later it was still hard to not have Meemaw there, but we all know she definitely has the better end of the deal. :)

The next day, we spent a lazy morning with my family and then headed over to Kyle's parents house after lunch. We stopped by Best Buy on the way just to see if they still had the Black Friday deal I was looking for on an e-reader, and they surprisingly had plenty left in stock! Even though it may be weird to some to know what you are getting for Christmas, it just makes me that much more excited!

Friday night we had Thanksgiving dinner #3 with Kyle's parents and his older sister, Jenny. One tradition that Kyle's family has that mine does not is making sausage stuffing, which made eating Thanksgiving dinner #3 that much easier to swallow (pardon the pun).

Saturday we did a family photo shoot by the covered bridge in Kyle's parent's neighborhood (it's gorgeous!), hoping to get a Christmas card picture out of it. Here's a sneak peek:

It's amazing we were able to get a family picture with all three dogs, since this is how they really feel about each other:

Don't let that picture fool you though, Kyle's parent's Dobermans are the sweetest dogs on earth. They just get a little annoyed by Doc because he is a playful puppy and they simply are not. Doc likes to push their buttons more than he should. ;) He quickly forgot his altercation with Kobe and Atlas as he had some quality bonding time with Jenny on the car ride home back from the bridge.

Later that afternoon we watched the Georgia/Georgia Tech game at a friend's house, glad to finish the season with a win. Here's Kyle's victory face:

Go Dawgs! (Don't know what that serious hubby face is all about.)
So that wraps up our Thanksgiving weekend, now for my favorite time of the year! I'm so excited because tonight we will be on the hunt for the perfect fraser fir Christmas tree and putting up the rest of our Christmas decor. Let the festivities begin!