It all revolves around Family.

Cord, Amberly, Cayden, Kennadi, and Quaid!

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Friday, November 29, 2013

The spirit of Giving.

I have been loving the last couple of weeks. Through whatever trials we may be facing, there is still so much good. SO many blessing. and SO much to be thankful for. Its overwhelming really.

I love this season, I love this season. I cant even say it enough. This is truly the best time of year, for so many reasons. One is just because everyone thinks its the best time of year and strangers treat strangers with more love and compassion. We all care more about one another and there is just a special spirit floating around in the air. I love that Christ is the center of it all, but that there are also so many other traditions that are family centered. I just love this time of year!!

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, I have so much I am thankful for. I'm sure you've heard the big black Friday debate going on everywhere ;) My philosophy, if you don't want to shop on thanksgiving then don't!! I wasn't fond of the idea of going Thursday night instead of Friday early early, but that's when the good deals were so I went. I went with my two beautiful sister in laws and I had a blast. I decided, you know what, Thanksgiving is about family and traditions and we spent the whole day with family, and then the whole night together and we had so much fun. We made memories, we laughed, we ate at Dennys at mid night. It was great. And we got some great deals on gifts for the people we love most. Whats so wrong with all of that? It was family centered and fun! Just what the holidays should be.

Back to what I meant to write this post about. I'm so thankful for my family. I am so thankful for all the blessing we have in our lives, which we have been noticing an abundance of lately. Its so nice to feel blessed. We don't have all we could ever want but we have what we need and so so much more. Blessed, that's just the word. So blessed.

So my day started off yesterday morning with waking early from a very sleepless night. Kennadi had a nightmare and woke me up at 1 am and I just couldn't go to sleep after that! Baby A (like how I'm waiting to announce her name haHA) was having a party inside my uterus and I was her only attendee. Every time I rolled over, she continued to party so I stayed up all night with her ;)
When I woke up I got going on the dough for the rolls. I had Kennadi helping me make pumpkin pancakes, she is an awesome flipper. I was also trying to knock the dishes out in between because I hadn't cleaned up from the night before, making all of my pies. Quaid came in and wanted in on that so he was scrubbing in the sink, Kenna flipping cakes, and I was doing dough. It worked out. We finished with all that, ate, then I started on my cheesy potatoes, veggie tray, and finishing up some laundry and more dishes! I had to run to Wal Greens because I needed make up as well. In the middle of all of this, I decided to dress everyone in their best for our family get together. I wanted to not look frumpy so I tore out all of my clothes from my closet that were my 'fancy' clothes. Cord came in the room and I tried on shirt after shirt after shirt....well nothing fits well. Of course. Long story short, it turned into a crying fest and poor Cord wasn't quite sure what to do with me. I cant help how emotional I am. Ha.
Cords Dad and brother and sister just happen to come over at that time and all caught me being a bawl baby....Brooke had a good laugh!! It was quite ridiculous but I couldn't hold in the tears. Back to being grateful, they were all so sweet to me and told me some very sweet things. I am blessed to have them and I love each of them so much. The crying ended and all was well, for a few minutes ;)

Okay, so here is a big secret. The rolls I spent so much time on were horrible. I mean terribly horrible. They tasted like shortening. I have no idea why. I used my grandmas recipe and I followed it to the T. Did it all just the way I was supposed to. I have this thing with rolls, I love them. They make holiday meals for me. But this is the 3rd time I have attempted homemade rolls and have failed, miserably. Oh boy. So I ran to lins as fast as I could with only 2 hrs until time to eat, and i bought Rhoads dough, let it rise the fast way, and baked them. They were perfect and SO SO GOOD!!! Thank goodness Lins was open and they had some left.
Shawn told me when I showed up with them, "see I told you they would turn out! They look so good!" I am a bad liar, I didn't tell him anything then but I almost did.  Then during the meal people kept commenting on the rolls, I just didn't make eye contact, I said thanks, and I looked down before my face turned bright red. I'm terrible.  I ended up telling my mother in law at the end of the night. I couldn't hold it in any longer.

I feel asleep in my in laws comfy bed and awoke to a hubby telling me I better hurry and get ready to go shopping!! Ok, don't have to tell me that twice!! Got home and ready and went out with the girls. It was all so great. Not every year is as much fun, but this one was near perfect.

I just want to say how awesome I think Kohls is before I end this. We went, only got a couple things. Stood in line for 1.5 hours. All of their employees were so happy and cheerful. Not one was rude or unhappy to be there. I had only $35 dollars worth of stuff I was buying, so I bought Toni and Brookes $10 items with mine so I could spend $50 to get $15 back in Kohls cash. My total ended up being 60 something, and i had a 15% off coupon so it was 50 something, Toni and Brooke paid me 10 in cash so I only spent $30, and got $15 in Kohls cash...then when we were walking out the door guy stopped us, our cashier was yelling for us to come back!!! We went back and he said sorry, he thought we won the dream receipt, but it was actually for the lady behind us!!!! It was crazy, once an hour Kohls gives a random person their stuff they are buying for free. How awesome is that!!! I noticed the lady behind me had a lot of stuff....cute cute stuff, and she won!! I was very happy for her, and I am just so impressed with Kohls. That made my whole night. It would have been lame if I had won, and only saved $30. But I bet she would have spent over $200, and she got it all free. So awesome. I'm going to shop at Kohls even more now. Like I said, Impressed.

And just so this post isn't so boring I will post some of my Thanksgiving pics.























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