christmas 2012.

so much love. so much food. so much laughter.

merry christmas!

and we're off!

christmas is coming a little early for our little family this year. 

due to mike's work schedule (he has to work on christmas eve & christmas, what!?) we are heading up to the mountains to spend the holidays with my parents tonight and celebrate with my sister and her kids tomorrow. i still have so much work to do, and have yet to wrap a single gift (we leave in three hours, eep!) 

for the actual holiday i bought a turkey breast, some russet potatoes (i am even making gravy for mike for the first time, ew) and an apple pie. i may make us a pumpkin pie too if i get ambitious enough. so we will just have a very low key holiday by ourselves and the furbabies. 

happy weekend all!

▲▲▲

happy hanukkah to all of our friends and family!

thanksgiving 2012

Part one of Thanksgiving was officially a blast! 

We went up to my parent's house on Wednesday evening to spend some time with my side of the family before hitting up Baltimore in the wee early hours of the morning today. 

It is always so wonderful seeing my family, and especially my little niece Hannah above. I cannot believe the beautiful, gracious little lady she is becoming. She is so much like her mama with her kind soul and spirit, she is one of those rare people in life which fill your heart with joy every time you see her. I am so blessed to be able to take part in her life and help mold who she is becoming. She truly has my heart. And the best part? Now that we have our new home and I have all the time in the world coming up to get the house in order, it means Hannah sleepovers! We are going to drive Mike insane with our makeovers, cookie baking and girly movies. He'll just have to deal with it.

And my nephews, my not so little any more nephews! I can not keep up with how fast they are growing! The oldest is a sophomore in high school now (what!) and the younger two are in middle school (MIDDLE SCHOOL!) where has time gone when those handsome little boys were still wearing matching polos and trying to get me to play with their Legos? Unbelievable!

Mike spent some time helping Will (my youngest nephew) whittle some branches into a bow and arrow to play around with. It warms my heart to see him playing with the boys and Will especially. Mike was so similar to Will when he was younger and I think they both pick up on that. They just get each other and it is just awesome to watch. 

My parents still find ways to make me laugh until my belly hurts at their crazy antics and my father and I still antagonize each other relentlessly (all in jest of course!) about every little thing imaginable. Mom found ways to spoil us (as always!) with sending loads of  leftovers and some other random findings around the house for us to take home to the kitties. I swear we never leave that house empty handed, it's pretty wonderful.

Every time I see my sister I just want to cry I love her so much. We never seem to get to spend enough time together and every time we see each other we can barely get a breath in because we have so much to say to each other. I miss her so much! 

All in all it was a truly wonderful holiday, the only not so wonderful part was having to leave Olivia with my parents while we venture off to Baltimore this morning. I could barely say goodbye to her without tearing up. This will officially be the longest Mike & I have ever been away from her. I hope it is harder on us than it is for her. I know she will have so much fun romping around the woods with my dad and exploring, but man I miss having her with me every where! 

We drove back last night to spend the night at home before heading out to MD in the morning and to cut out some drive time. We got some bad news from my dad, my car needs some serious TLC (Thanks Lifetouch!) so we will have to take Mike's no cruise control tin can of a Saturn for our trip. My car will have to stay with my dad next weekend for a couple of weeks to get some love put back into it and I am going to grumble every day about having to drive Mike's car. At least we have two cars though right? And at least my dad is a mechanical genius and can fix my car without charging me my first born. He may just take Olivia as payment though, he has already threatened. :]

So up north we go tomorrow to see Mike's family for the weekend! We are so excited to see his brother, sister in law and niece Zoe! And of course eat his dad's prosciutto stuffed turkey breast tomorrow for lunch! I swear Mike & I will both be ten pounds heavier by the end of this holiday! We also can not wait to go to Wegman's and Trader Joe's. We don't have either where we live and we are definitely going to stock up on some goodies to bring home with us for the winter. I swear I could spend hours in both of those stores. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and was surrounded by those they love for the holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving!

{ hey, it's christmas }

want to get into the holiday spirit?
these awesome people gathered musicians from all over the world to create this great playlist. and the best part? it's available for a free download! talk about some super christmas spirit. check out the website here and get your copy!

{ thanksgiving 2011 }

oh sure, the best part of the holidays are reconnecting and spending time with those you love, but when you come to my mom's house, you gotta give some admiration to the glorious amounts of FOOD!




love love, your still eating leftovers blogger, heather.

{halloween.}

halloween is pretty much a favourite holiday for everyone in my family. the niece and nephews pretty much start planning their costumes in the summer and spend the next few months changing their minds several times over, finally driving their mother crazy in trying to scramble with last minute costume adjustments.

after pumpkin carving with the kids and with mike too, needless to say i had lots of yummy roasted pumpkin seeds for roasting. i am going to try (fingers crossed) to grow my own next year, but knowing our silly puppy, they may end up getting eaten before they even see daylight.

and as always i used the kids as an excuse to dress up and go trick or treating with them (no i didn't get candy, except for what hannah shared with me later on) and enjoyed the sights of wasena drive, as every year.

aaron, of course being the freshman he is was too cool to be seen trick or treating with his younger siblings, but rode dutifully in the car with his dad and snuck candy from his sister's bag when the opportunity arose.

mike's mask was a $6 target find and my makeup took a total of a half hour to do, but hey on the sly i think we did pretty well. even if i did look like a clown and mike scared a few toddlers.

Independence Day.