Thanksgiving 2014

Our Thanksgiving this year was spent at my inlaws in South Carolina and to make it an even bigger family celebration, my parents and brother drove down and spent it with us! So we had all of our parents with us for Thanksgiving this year. Perfection. I love being able to spend the holidays with family and having our complete family together is a luxury that I know many do not have. Very thankful indeed. Especially with our Christmas plans so up in the air it is nice to know we saw all of our parents for Thanksgiving.

Ryan and I with my parents and brother... and the Dup Dup

Selfie style later on with my mother in law and sister in law

We ate so much! I tried to be careful with my gallbladder on the fritz but man I could not resist trying a little bit of everything.

 

Plus there was pie... about four of them. Two apple, two pumpkin plus my mom made pecan pie bars that were so amazing they didn't survive the weekend.

 

As you can imagine we were too full to function much beyond watching football. Naturally my brother insisted on some selfies and I think I broke a top teen rule by taking a screenshot of a snapchat (an app I still don't really understand but have because I have maybe four friends who use it and insist I do too). I don't care though, I love the picture of me and my "baby" brother, who turned 18 years old on the first. Where has the time gone!? We gave him a Casio G-Shock watch that will hopefully last him forever... Ryan has had one since bootcamp and it got him through two deployments and various other crazy situations, so it is a good watch indeed. We also drove to Ryan's grandmother's house and his sister's dad's house to visit that evening.

 

Friday I don't think we got out of our pajamas. We watched a lot of movies, Home Alone, How to Train Your Dragon, The Wizard of Oz, and Love Actually. It was officially after Thanksgiving so I was all about the Christmas movies!

 

Saturday we became productive members of society again and actually got up early to head down to the street fair/market in Downtown Columbia. I love stuff like this! It was chilly bur not freezing and I had some delicious hot cocoa to boot.

I also found pierogies. In South Carolina! Epic, epic win in my book!

 

 

We got some pretty cool things there including home made ravioli (bacon, mozerella and sundried tomato), an art print of Molecular Chemistry that has wine bottles and the chemical breakdown of wine (LOVE), boiled peanuts, hot sauce and some other snacks. Then Ryan realized he never actually showed me Columbia properly in the, you know, seven years we've been together... so I got a tour. We went by the state house and some other really neat buildings and the campus of USC.

Christmas tree near the State House

State House all decorated for Christmas

 

Family selfie in front of the tree

After that we went back to the house with wings (well salad for me) to watch the USC/Clemson rivalry game... and that did not turn out well for us. After winning the last five years in a row Clemson beat the Gamecocks this year. Sad. Well, I guess they can have this one! Saturday night we watched more movies and slept in a bit Sunday before battling traffic to get home again. It took us an hour and a half longer than normal (thanks 95!) but we made it.

Overall it was a wonderful weekend with family and I am so thankful we had it!

Ringing in the New Year

Our New Year's weekend was rather low key. After traveling for Thanksgiving and Christmas we decided to stay in town and just spend the weekend with friends. Saturday night Ben and Chelsea came over and we walked over to the bar and just had a good night letting loose. We played pool and talked and just had a good time. Sunday we recovered and Monday was New Years Eve.

Nicole invited us to her house for dinner and games and we had a blast. I tried some no heat curls to fancy myself up a little and I think they turned out pretty well! Ryan was funny since he never heard of any of the games (um, I hadn't really either!) and he kept saying he was being played. Actually by the end of the night we were three dollars up some how! Not bad considering how many games we both played and lost before we won.

We played dice games (left, right, center), golf, 99, and screw your neighbor. Nicole and Laura sang karaoke but I know better than to sing in public so I stayed at the game table!

 I was the DD for the night but I did have some champagne at midnight! Delicious!

Our New Years kiss! After watching the ball drop Ryan danced me around the living room to Frank Sinatra. Perfect.

My hand from the one game I won!

 New Years Day we went to Buffalo Wild Wings and watched the Gamecocks play in the Outback Bowl.... and they won! We sat there for about four hours watching the game and dragging out our dinner, but it was so worth it.

THE hit heard around the world! We literally jumped out of our chairs when it happened!

 Yesterday was a trip to the commissary which was absolutely heinous. I normally shop during the day and on my own and never on pay day. Between everyone checking in and then the registers all crashing the line literally went around the entire store back towards the entrance near the produce section. I took my time shopping and after Ryan checked in he came and stood in line for me while I finished up. Luckily I always do self check out so the line was a little less bad, but still pretty awful.

Now there may be a mini employment thing in the works, I will blog about it more later when I have more information.... but there is a trial run tonight! Still waiting to hear from the library.

Tomorrow I am getting my wisdom teeth out (and completely freaking out) but I assume I will be lounging in bed this weekend and not on the blog world. I hope you all had a wonderful New Years and are kicking off 2013 in the best way possible. See you all soon!

Mum Fest

Rehearsals are going well. We have officially entered Tech Week... aka Hell Week. So there was rehearsal this morning and run throughs with lights and cues, a "cue to cue" run, and a lot of time of me up on a ladder! When I got home Ryan and I got in the car and headed off to New Bern for the Mum Festival. North Carolina is big on festivals and I was pretty excited for this one! All of New Bern was covered in booths and tents... everything from food to games to sellers to rides. We spent a good bit of money but we planned it in advance so we were prepared!

We arrived in the late afternoon and the place was definitely busy!

Neither of us had really eaten anything big beforehand (luckily!) and the first thing we did after getting a lucky free parking spot was hit the food.

All this for $20! Ryan got a gyro and I got a "steak and cheese" which we swappedx back and forth. Then we got dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) with greek salad and wing chips. Delicious! We found a curb at the bank drive thru and chowed down. Once that was finished Ryan went on a mission to get some fresh lemonade and not have to spend $6 on it. He was gone for awhile and I was starting to get antsy, I had his phone to boot, but he came back with not just lemonade...

He had fried oreos too!!! They are a huge favorite of mine and I rarely get them! I was so excited that I didn't even glance at the $4 lemonade. Good job Sweetie! After we ate about 3,000 calories each we walked around to all the tents and made our way to the rides.

Ryan tried to get me on the ferris wheel but I am terrified of them. It was 4 tickets each and a dollar a ticket so I was not spending $8 to do something I am a little petrified of. Then Ryan made the mistake of talking to the carnies at the games. Big Mistake. We got suckered in to no less than three games.

Check out my $15 bounty! $5 each and if we played just one more time it could have been bigger. No thanks. Ryan caught on and we walked away with the little gang I had collected. We picked up some more food stuffs to take home.

Naturally my husband found the hot sauce guy and bought a bottle of something he had gotten many times before at Firehouse Subs. I also got a box of beer bread from a Tasefully Simple lady after I explained to my husband the concept. We also hit up the NC Lotto area and bought a bunch of scratch offs, won a tshirt and then won back $12! We had maybe a total $2 profit since Ryan used his to buy more but I held on to my bounty proudly.

As the sun and the temperature dropped we made our way back home. I jokingly started to play Pididdle with Ryan in the car and by the time we got back to Jacksonville we were both shoeless, shirtless and Ryan was beltless. Forget mid twenties, we are kids at heart!

Now Ryan grilled up some chicken and we are going to watch the Gamecocks take on LSU. Go Gamecocks!!!!

Happy Weekend all! And thanks for sticking with me in my lack of bloggingness lately. A review and give away will be up shortly as will more information about my show.

Thanksgiving

Our plans for Thanksgiving changed multiple times in the time leading up to the holiday, but in the end we had a terrific time together with lots of food, family and friends.

Unfortunately Ryan could not get out of 29 Palms until after class on Wednesday, which basically meant a whole lot of Marines were flying through Palm Springs, Phoenix and even with him in Charlotte! My husband was on a 10pm (his time) flight and did not land in DC until 10am my time. Plus two change overs along the way. That is love.

I got him at the airport and we started the four hour drive to my grandparents' house. And by we started I mean I drove and he slept! Traffic wasn't too bad for Thanksgiving, there was a car break down in the Fort McHenry tunnel, which really sucks considering it is only two lanes, and there was some back up on the NJ Turnpike, but we made it just before 3pm.

Food. Oh man was there food!



Turkey, cornbread, stuffing, cranberry horseradish, stuffed mushrooms, rutebega, gravy, brussel sprouts macaroni and cheese... and that isn't even counting dessert!



My Dad's plum wine, my apple pie (the flower looking one in the picture), two other apple pies, ricotta pie, pumpkin pie, grapes, more wine... it just went on and on!



I look more jetlagged than he does :P



Better!

It was great to see my mom and dad and my brother, even my dog, again. Babci and Poppy as well as one set of Aunt/Uncle/Cousins. Football was watched, champagne was opened and it was a terrific time.



Totem pole? I have no idea what we were doing!



Three generations. My cousin Jill and her mom Joan (one of my mom's sisters), Babci, Mom and Me



Me and Dippy. As my mom said we now have the same colored hair!



LOVE this picture. Babci and Poppy with Ryan and I.

The next day we slept in and spent some more time with Babci and Poppy before getting on the road back to the part of Jersey I was originally from. We stopped by our dear friends Fran and Rob (and Chris and Nicole and Cocoa) for a delicious lunch/dinner that made me so glad I am from Jersey! Sausage and Pepper sandwiches! Also baked macaroni, nachoes, cucumbers and lots of left over Halloween candy. Stuffed.

Then we got back in the car and drove home... Ryan helped this time!

When we got home that night our neighbor Adam got revenge. If you read our Mischief Night story it makes more sense!



Balloons. All taped and netted to our door! It took me forever to pop them all and clean up!

Saturday we slept in, grabbed lunch at ihop, and went and saw the Muppets movie. Hysterical! It was also supremely gorgeous all weekend so we went to the park and watched the sunset. Being by the river and it nearly 70 explains how I have mosquito bites on my ankles. In November.







You may remember we watched the Gamecocks Rivalry game against Clemsucksson and kicked butt! After that we enjoyed many reruns of Storage Wars on Netflix before crawling into bed quite late.

Which made us almost oversleep Sunday. Ryan had to be at the airport for a flight at 2pm, and we barely got out of bed by noon! By the time we showered, got his stuff together and to the airport it was almost 1! Of course I had to cry saying goodbye to him, it never gets any easier, and I spent the rest of the day grocery shopping, making Christmas cards via Shutterfly, and watching Chick Flicks.

Man I miss him already! Three more weeks until Christmas!

Go Gamecocks!!!

Husband + Sweaters + Wings + Beer + Neighbors = GO COCKS!!!

Clemson you are going DOWN.

Gotta love rivalries (: