thanksgiving

thanksgiving break always takes a lot out of me. lots of eating and shopping, my life is tough.

we were blessed to spend thanksgiving with my momma and daddy. mom is a fantastic cook and thanksgiving is always great with my parents, even though it was just the 4 of us at lunch.

14 pounds of pure goodness. 

after lunch, i looked at every single black friday ad. it's a tradition. i have always loved weekly ads, i'm pretty sure that is a little bit strange...but i'm okay with that.

we spent a significant amount of time taking family pictures for our christmas card. this isn't the one going out, but too cute of millie not to share. plus, i didn't want the only picture of the post to be a turkey :)

my brother and sister-in-law came over for dinner and we stuffed our faces again. so good to see them. 

i am so blessed to have such a loving husband and family. we had a fantastic thanksgiving break...but it sure is nice to be back home.

pre-thanksgiving trip to virginia

we spent the past couple of days visiting with justin's family in richmond, virginia. we hadn't been there in a minute, so it was really good to spend time with them!

we made the drive up on saturday, which was quite beautiful...although it took us over 8 hours from georgia. i don't remember the fall leaves looking as pretty as they have this season. i like it.

after church on sunday, we walked over to lexi's elementary school and played with millie and on the playground. (justin put millie in my lap and i fell off the swing. i have bruises to prove)
lexi and i collected leaves to make her mom a centerpiece for the table.

we played lots of cards and watched the dogs play. look at the earlier posts about shopping with lexi and millie's retrieving skills for more specific stories about our trip. all in all, we had a really great visit!

on our way back to georgia from richmond, we spent the night in north carolina with justin's aunt. his aunt and uncle live on multiple acres and have 4 dogs, 3 goats, 3 pigs and 2 cats. pretty much animal paradise. millie loved playing with the other dogs. but was scared of the goats and cats...imagine that! we had a great time visiting with aunt tracy as well!!

happy thanksgiving ya'll!!

millie's skills.

during our visit, we were hanging out on the back porch at justin's mom's house. it was such a pretty day, we spent the afternoon sitting out there reading and playing with the dogs.

at one point i leaned over the deck to take a picture of millie running with a HUGE stick and dropped my sunglasses. millie immediately ran to my glasses, picked them up and brought them over to me. how precious? i love our dog.

short-lived surprises

i am posting this short one from virginia. we have had a great time visiting with justin's mom, step-dad and little sister. i promise i will have a long post with lots of pics soon.

the whole family went to target before dinner last night and lexi (justin's 8 year old sis) and i shopped for her christmas presents for her mom and dad. we ran and hid around the store as we picked out the best presents, plus spent lots of time making sure she had enough money. the selection process took around 25 minutes.

lexi was so proud of the surprises she bought her parents.
so proud that she felt the need to tell them everything we got them...before we could even make it to the car.

so much for the Christmas morning surprise.
oh kids. oh well, it was fun and they will like what we picked out.

adventures under the deck.

background for this post: we got to my parent's house on monday afternoon. it had been raining pretty much non-stop for 24 hours. wilma, my childhood dog, is 14 and spends most of her time under the deck.

Under 5 minutes from when we got to my parent's house, Millie decided to find shelter from the rain/wet grass by going under the deck with Wilma. When we finally saw her again, she was covered head to toe in good ole Georgia mud. I wish I snapped a picture of that...she was ecstatic, I was disgusted.

Our solution was to tie her to my parent's fence and hose her down. She did NOT enjoy that at all.

(note: that bandana was white before the incident. crisp, clean white.)

She spent the majority of the time chugging water as we attempted to get her clean.


After her mud bath, her coat was so soft and shiny. Now I know why people spend oodles of money on those treatments at a spa.