Holiday Spirit!

Hi everyone! Hope you had a great weekend. I am doing decently well, as well as can be considering I've been battling one of the worst colds I think I've ever had for almost two weeks. I think I have experienced just about every symptom, from sore throat to congestion to coughing (at one time, I'm pretty sure I coughed up a little blood, eee!) to sinus issues. After coming back to Madison from a lovely few days at home for Thanksgiving, all I wanted to do was rest and relax. Fortunately for me, L is so wonderful to me and immediately started nursing me back to health. He gave me tea, water, chicken soup, and more. I fought him hard on the amount of water he made me drink (three 32 oz. bottles in one day), but I really do think it helped a lot. While a few of my symptoms are still lingering, I think I'm finally on the mend. Woohoo!

Me being on the mend meant a few things for us this past weekend - we went to Target on Saturday to check out a couple sales (one of which involved me getting 20 rolls of wrapping paper. Uh.....yeah.), we went for a 3-mile walk in the brisk air, and we spent some good time relaxing. Great day! On Sunday, we laid around for awhile in the morning, went to Target again (yes, we have a problem) to get some cooking supplies, and then we ended up spending much more time in there than we expected because we got caught up in the Christmas decorations. That was my fault because I just wanted to peek, but then L informed me that our apartment complexes do a holiday decorating contest each year, and top prize can get $100 off their rent. Once we talked about that, he got super excited and we basically filled our cart with stuff to decorate my balcony. We just pooled our resources and are decorating my place rather than decorating his and competing against each other, so we went nuts! After we got home and started decorating the balcony, we realized we didn't have enough lights to do what we wanted. So, we ended up going back to Target AGAIN to get more stuff. Lucky for us, both of us went shopping at Target on Black Friday (we went separately), and we each got a 20% off coupon for purchases this week. We made good use of those coupons, as well as my Cartwheel app and 5% discount for using my Target debit card, so I went from about zero holiday decorations to about a million! ;) We haven't finished decorating quite yet, so I'll wait to provide pics, but we're pretty excited. On the night the apartments get judged for decorations, L wants to be outside on my balcony in a Santa suit to add to the affect, so that'll be hilarious. Just for that night, we'll also move the Christmas tree out there so it'll look extra awesome. I really think we could win, or at least place. I hope so. It'll help make up for the cost of everything we bought, ha! Beyond all of this, L also brought over his artificial tree, so we put that up last night and decorated it, so I'm super excited. Definitely in the Christmas spirit, probably more than ever! Not sure what's gotten into me this year, but I've felt more into the holidays for one reason or another. Kinda fun! And I finally have enough money that I was able to by everyone in my family something for Christmas. Can't wait to give everyone their presents!:)

Take a look at a few pics from Thanksgiving and from our holiday adventures. Can't wait to share more!

 The start of pictures with all the kiddos! Here's me with Drew and Nash!

(Sorry in advance for the blurry quality of many of these. :-/ Sad.)

 Uncle Randy with Homer!

 Me and Drew!

 Me and Lia!

 Me and Peyton!

 Me and Tayt!

 Me and Austyn!

 Goofing around with brother and uncle Jake!

 Me and Meg!

 The best Homer would give me;).

 Me and the sisters-in-law, Casey and Courtney! 

(And my new nieces and/or nephews in each of their bellies;))

 Drew opening her birthday present from Aunt Nae Nae!

 Minnie Mouse!!!!!:)

 Me and mama!

Now onto a few random ones from the weekend back in Madison!

 L trying out his Santa pajamas from Target. HA! I can't even tell you how much I love this:).

 Homemade chicken soup (yum!), water, and tea is just what doctor L ordered!

 All my Target wrapping paper! On Saturday after Thanksgiving, all their trees were 50% off (we didn't get one), and all their wrapping paper was buy one, get one free. Since I usually buy their more expensive stuff, this was such a steal!! Even when it goes on clearance after the holidays, I think I still will have gotten a better deal at this sale. How can one go wrong?! :) I'm seriously still so excited!

 After getting our first round of decorations, we got dressed up in Christmas colors to help us get in the spirit of decorating. We may or may not have looked exactly like this when we went back to Target a second time;).

 

Sneak peek of the balcony! This isn't anywhere near the final product, just a teaser. :)

 The tree lit up after we decorated it!

 Here it is again, but now with some presents under it. How fun!

 Feeling a little extra inspired this year, I decided to create a Christmas banner of my own. I often see them in catalogs like Paper Source, and after some thought, I figured it would be pretty easy to do it on my own. It wasn't tough at all. Just took some circle stencils and traced out some circles on tan, red, and green cardstock. After I cut them out, I glued each circle onto the next. For the letters, I simply printed them on regular computer paper and cut circles out of them too. For the string, I just taped it through the back of the circles. For the future, I may consider creating small holes in each circle and looping some twine in them so they stay in place a little better, but we'll see. For a first try, I was pretty excited!

Happy holidays, everyone!:)

L's Birthday!

You know I'm behind when I'm doing a post about something that was over a month ago, but still wanted to say a little something about the fun we had for L's birthday. Originally, I was going to make L a birthday dinner ON his birthday, but since much of his family is in town, we all went out after work to Journey for Chinese food and sushi instead. We stuffed ourselves full and then went out for a couple drinks afterwards. Lots of fun! I still wanted to do something special for him, so we waited until we had a free weekend and could celebrate together. During that weekend, we went out for a nice dinner on Friday at a place that L won a gift card for, and the next day, we built a fort, watched a bunch of movies, and had a nice birthday dinner that I made (with help on the asparagus;). I wish we had weekends like that more often. I say that now as I sit here on a Saturday evening by myself. I've got a nasty cold that creeped in yesterday, and he's on his way to Arkansas for the next week. He goes every year for Thanksgiving to see his parents and his oldest brother and his brother's family. I'm happy he gets to make that trip every year, but sad that we haven't been able to spend a Thanksgiving together yet. Comes with the territory, I suppose! Anyway, we enjoyed having a couple different celebrations for his birthday, and I hope you enjoy a few pics from our adventures!:)

 L with his first plates of food at Journey on his actual birthday!

 Enjoying some drinks at Buffalo Wild Wings!

 All of us getting a kick out of L's niece D!

L's sister M and his niece D. She was eyeing up that martini! ;)

 On our walk home, we stumbled across this beauty of a tree! :)

This is another one we saw. I love fall colors!

 The restaurant L won a gift card to is called The Wise. It's in a hotel by campus. We weren't sure what to expect since the items were a little pricey and they were 'small plates,' so we kinda thought we might spend a lot of money for a little food. Thankfully, we got a pretty solid amount of food, and it was all taken care of by the gift card. Yum!

 Our delicious dessert!

 Day two of our relaxing, 'birthday' weekend. Here is our fort!

 L testing it out!

 Hanging out inside the fort. :)

 Perfect fit!

 After being lazy all day, we finally started moving around and I made dinner for L. We had Parmesan Crusted Chicken, scalloped potatoes, and steamed asparagus. SO good. In fact, we both loved the chicken so much that we made it again a few nights later! :)

Mmmmm. Hope you all get a relaxing weekend in there sometime soon too!

Halloween + Turkey Day! (Yep, I'm Behind.)

Okay, okay. This is almost a joke nowadays. I am so far behind that I am going to combine Halloween and Thanksgiving into one post. I could add Christmas and New Year's too, but it might get a little long, so I'll do a combined one on that soon! I find myself wondering... "Do people even have interest in seeing this stuff so long after it happened?!" And then I figure I might as well still do it as a way for me to remember, and as a way to keep you updated, even if I'm behind! :)

Let's start with Halloween. Last year, I was welcomed into an 'exclusive' group of friends who celebrate Halloween in a BIG way. I came into that group because of my connection to L, and I couldn't be happier about it. You may or may not recall my AWESOME costume last year (the theme was "80's Icons"), and this year, the theme was "Board Game Characters." I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there that I wasn't overly thrilled with my costume this year. Wasn't quite as creative. But it was still fun! I went as Mrs. White from Clue. Most depictions show her as a frumpy 'ol lady, but I just went with a typical maid costume and made it a little sexier. ;) L went was the guy from Monopoly, and boy did he get into it! Almost too into it, ha! Overall, it was a great weekend! We took Friday off, so we drove up to La Crosse really early (that's where the annual celebration is held, and this was L's first weekend at the event as a non-La Crosse resident). We basically drank all day and just enjoyed everyone's company. Ha! Enjoy some pics of the weekend!

Leaving Madison for La Crosse!

 First of the crew to arrive in La Crosse!

Some of the ladies! :)

  

(I like the pic above, and L likes the pic below.:)

 Ladies get down! :)

 A visit to La Crosse wouldn't be complete without a trip to Del's!

Me and Kayleigh! :)

 Let the Halloween celebration commence! (Monopoly Man and Mrs. White)

 The cast of Clue minus Professor Plum!

 Makes me smile. :)

 See?! Isn't that costume creepishly good?! He's even got a little "Community Chest!"

 The crew that lasted the longest!

We stopped at a pumpkin patch on our way back from La Crosse. Fun!

And then there was Thanksgiving. I was able to get home for a few days, which of course is always fantastic! Being in Milwaukee and always on the go makes it hard to get home as often as I'd like, so I welcome any chance I get. Thanksgiving food always makes me pretty pumped too! Anyway, I unfortunately didn't take too many pictures over the weekend, but here are a few random ones I got! I did also have some on my old phone, but it'd be a lot of work to get them onto my computer, so you'll just have to live without them. ;) Hope you all have lots of things to be thankful for! Every so often, on days like today when I have a particularly rough day, I have to be sure to take the time to remember how many good things I have. Anyway, enjoy a few more pics!

 What's a Thanksgiving reunion without a little high school-esque drinking?! ;)

 Above: Me and Bean; Below: Me and Becca

 

Me and Erin!

 Me and Mama on Thanksgiving Day! Just getting ready to cook!

Holding sweet baby Meg! :)
  

Dancing with my papa at Allison's!

 Me and Subs!

 Me and Gerdie!

If you're still reading my blog after all my monthly breaks in posts, I thank you dearly! It means a lot to me! :)