Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Black Friday

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. A couple little mishaps but oh well, that's to be expected, not liked or wanted, but to be expected sometimes. I always take pies to my parents for Thanksgiving, 2 pumpkin and 2 pecan. I make a mean pie if I do say so myself. Anyway, last Sunday I made a turkey and left it to cook while we were at Blake's football awards ceremony. Ashleigh brought Blake home so I could stay and help clean up and not wonder what he was doing every minute. When they walked into the house it was full of smoke. The turkey had spilled over into the bottom of the stove and there was smoke everywhere. They turkey was done, Ashleigh took it out and turned everything off. She opened the windows and aired the house out. I haven't had anytime this week to try and clean it out, it's self cleaning so that's not really much of an excuse but I am a busy person, and to tell the truth I kind of forgot about it. Wayne tried to cook something on Wednesday for lunch and he said it was smoking. So, now I have to clean the stove before I can cook pies. (If you ask Rusty when I tell a story you get all the details, some you probably don't want to hear, but it's my blog and and you are stuck reading every. little. detail) I turn on the self cleaning and as it gets hotter the stove starts smoking more and more. I figured it would burn off and everything would be fine. WRONG. The house is filling up with smoke, it is burning our eyes and throats and Rusty is convinced we are all going to die from carbonmonoxide poisoning. It was horrible. He made me turn it off, I am still convinced it's going to be ok, as long as everyone sleeps on the deck. ha ha ha We aired the house, again, but now there are no pies. I was so upset, we've never had a Thanksgiving without pumpkin pies. So my brother, God love him who has helped me more times than I can count, gets in the car Wednesday night and makes a trip to Wal-Mart in search of pies for me. It was an experience I do not care to have happen again. We did have a great Thanksgiving even without homemade pies. We went to my mother-in-laws first, everyone was there and we had good food and got to visit. Then we got to my Mom's and had more wonderful food. Wayne was at his Dad's this year and Ashleigh had been invited to spend Thanksgiving with her friend Mara's family in Georgia so we were really missing them. My Aunt and her family were there and we all had a wonderful visit. My cousin was there with her 7 month old Peyton and he is so adorable. Don't you agree?

He really is a miracle, there was a real question whether Nicole would be able to have children and look what God blessed our family with.

We had a good time all of us together, but we were really missing my Mawmaw. The holidays are really hard this year for our family. I can't imagine what my Pawpaw is going through.

Sorry about the fingers, Steven put his hand up as I was taking the picture. He claimed it was an accident.

I spent the night at Mom and Dad's and Rusty took Blake and went back to his Mom's last night. Mom and I were shopping and Rusty and was hunting with his brothers. My mother-in-law was babysitting Blake. Mom and I were up at 3am and out of the house by about 3:45. We were armed and ready to shop. We had plotted our take over of Harrisonburg until we hit Circuit City about 4:15, the line was down the sidewalk with people waiting to get in at 5. I've been shopping on Black Friday for alot of years and I've never heard of people lining up at 10:00 the night before. I am sorry there is not 1 thing in any store that is worth standing outside all night to buy. We headed to Wal-Mart and had a lot of luck there. We stopped for breakfast around 7:30 and then hit the stores again. I got home about 3:30 exhausted. But there was no one home but me and I do my best cleaning when I am alone so I attacked the house and got it into order. And guess what? I got that oven clean and it is ready to cook in again. Horray for me.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and whether you stayed home or ran all over like we do, take time to stop and think about everything we have to be thankful for. We need to do that everyday of the year and thank God that we live in the country we do and that we are surrounded by family and friends that we love.

Good night.

Bridget