Thanksgiving and beyond

We had a great Thanksgiving! It was at our house this year and we worked like little devils and got the place cleaned up - thanks to mom!  Cooked the turkey, made the relish tray, fixed my strawberry pretzel salad, and the day went great. Of course the whipped cream on the pie, so to speak, was having Hailey over for dinner! She's so sweet, and growing like a weed. She loves to talk and can tell stories now, not just parrot phrases back to you - so that's fun. We had a good crowd and we ate about 4, so everyone was gone by 8 or so. It was time to relax and enjoy the quiet after the hubbub... Good day!

Saturday after Thanksgiving Matt came over to do some laundry and brought Hails with him. We took her out to do some grocery shopping and pick out a tree - what fun! So glad we got to take her with us! We were listening to Christmas music on the radio and they identified their station, something like, 104.5 the Star, your Christmas station - Hailey pipes up from the back seat of the truck "Your Christmas station". We had to laugh, it was just so fully the way she said it. She loves making people laugh too, the big ham.

Meg and Jason came over for dinner Saturday night, I made my potato and ham chowder. Steve and Jason got the tree set up - and then we discovered the tree stand was leaking - a hole had rusted through. I think if it didn't sit on the back porch from January to July it wouldn't have rusted out, but what do I know? Anyway, had it up and ready for the lights, but then Steve made a quick trip to Home Depot and got a new stand. In the meantime, Meg and Jason (mostly Meg - come on, how many guys decorate for Christmas?) got a lot of our decorations put out. Definitely looking like Christmas! Another good day!

I did something to my back before Thanksgiving and it's really bothering me. Now it's moved up and is in my neck, so I can't turn my head or tilt it back without a lot of pain. Sucks, but if that's all I have to complain about, I'm happy! It's only 19 degrees out tonight. I hate the cold - despise it as a matter of fact, but we have many more moons of cold weather coming, I'm afraid.

That's it for now - I have to upload my iPod to get some new pics and the video of Hailey talking about what lives in birdhouses... I love her so much and miss her every day! Can't wait until summer when Matt has her for months instead of a week!