Before Christmas

The weekend before Christmas Sally and Tag came to visit because Eric was down from Utah visiting his dad. Saturday night James, Brodie, and Eric had a sleep over at Brodie's where they stayed up all night playing video games and watching movies (lame, these are grown men) and Sally and Tag stayed with me. Sunday I got a sub for nursery so Sally and Tag and I could go see Joel Osteen! Except, Joel wasn't there :( I was sad. But that didn't stop all these people from hoopin and hollerin about Jesus! We just took a couple of pics, browsed the bookstore (where strangely I found the canister set I've been wanting for years), and hit up an LDS chapel in Houston-the first one James family attended when they moved here back in the '80s. Then we went to Brodie and Jennika's and had hamburgers and played games.

I then spent the next couple of evenings making all of this...

20 plates of goodies for our co-workers. NEVER AGAIN. By the time I was down I didn't want to look at another sweet. For the rest of Christmas. It was sad. But everyone loved them: red velvet cake balls, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and Oreo balls.

James' Work Retreat

For Christmas the owners of the company James works for took the directors and their wives on a retreat to Lake Conroe. We stayed at this pretty nice resort (more than I would expect from Lake Conroe?). We were on the 19th floor and here is our little suite. We were greeted with a cheese and fruit plate and a bottle of wine, which we gave to James' dad. I scarfed that down before heading off to my 3:00 massage and 4:00 pedicure while James had a meeting. The spa was fab and much needed. After my pampering I went back to the room to get dressed and James headed down to cocktail hour at one of the bars (cocktail hour... fancy huh?). I met him there and found my new favorite "drink": Rum Punch without the rum. The punch is pineapple juice, orange juice, and grenadine. So good! After cocktail hour we were driven over to this French restaurant. It was a first for pretty much everyone at the table. And I think we all pretty much agreed that French food is amazing, but you need about 3x the amount of food. We were all still a little hungry when we left... fat Americans. Had to get a pic in front of this huge wine thingy. This doesn't even show how big it was.

Violet's 80th Birthday

Violet is James' step-mom's mother... so his step-grandmother. For her 80th birthday Mark and Deborah went all out. They didn't tell anyone what they were planning until the day of-they only told everyone that we would really want to go and we could dress up as fancy as we wanted. Obviously I was totally down :) AND I guessed exactly what we were going to be doing. They flew Violet's other two daughters and their husbands down on Friday, and Saturday night we al got dressed up, met at Mark and Deborah's house, had a champagne toast (James and I toasted Red Bull ;) ), and then all 17 of us waited for the arrival of... a party bus that Mark had specifically said he didn't want! Ha! I guess the limo we were supposed to have was having issuses? So for a moment we hopped on the party bus to check it out. Then the limo showed up. It was as crazy as a limo ride can be with a bunch of grown-ups... nothing like prom night! Ha! I did pop my head out the window and get a few people to wave at me! The limo took us to Brenner's on the Bayou where a private room was set up with a special menu. I don't know if its legible, but I had a crab cake, tomato basil soup, striped bass with crab meat, and chocolate cake. It was FaBuLoUs! And let me just say NOT CHEAP. Apparently, for a private party the minimum is $2,500, which you would think would be easy to hit with a 17 person party-11 of which are drinking right? Nope. Our bill was $1,900, so at the end Mark was telling everyone to order anything they wanted since we had to pay the $600 extra anyways. So one guy ordered a $250 shot of scotch... isn't that insane? For a drink!
I do enjoy fine dining!

The Month of November

I cannot believe I missed blogging an entire month! I'm very disappointed in myself, but here it all finally is. This may be the longest post ever.

*I decorated for Christmas WAY early this year. I'm kind of against putting up Christmas things before Thanksgiving, but I just couldn't help myself. I came home from work one day in early November in a Christmas mood, put on some Christmas music, made some hot chocolate, and busted it out.

I even decorated a little Texas tree for James. I may keep it up all year :)*Mid-November Jennika and I went to the Nutcracker Market, which was SO fun! Definitely a new holiday tradition for Maggie. The goal is for my mom to be able to go with us next year, she was so jealous! We weren't sure what to expect, and couldn't get there until about 1:00pm, but five hours later we each had some goodies and BIG plans for next year! *The next weekend Brodie and Jennika came up to hang out because Brodie had a two-day lacrosse tournament right by our house. We got to go to one of the boys' games, which James really enjoyed. Here you can see Lily hiding under his shirt because she was so cold. *The Tuesday before Thanksgiving Corbin flew down and drove with us on Wednesday to Alabama. What was supposed to be a 12 hour drive turned into 14 as we kept venturing off to find restraurants that were way further off the beaten path than we thought. Oh well. It was so nice to see Grandmama (my dad's mom). I hadn't seen her in over two years and I really missed her! I was so excited that I got to learn how to make her famous Chicken & Dumplings for Thanksgiving! They're so easy and they really are the BEST. Here's James hanging out with my cousin Ethan. They were so cute together! Here's the whole fam at Thanksgiving (well not the whole family, but everyone who was there). *On Friday morning we left at 6:00 am to head to Tuscaloosa for the big game. We got there with the perfect amount of time to see and do all that we wanted to before the game started. Right when we got on campus James won these stickers that he and my sister wore all day. I love that he's become quite the Bama fan :)Lauren's boyfriend Jake won this shirt! Lucky! In the background is the President's mansion. I've always loved that house. In front of the stadium. It was SO cold that day. If my dress hadn't been so dang cute I would have certainly been wearing jeans and boots! In front of the stadium are statues of all the coaches who have lead the Crimson Tide to the national championship. Here we are with Bear Bryant. I can't believe we were able to get a picture with Big Al! I was so happy! After seeing all the sites on the strip we went to the Paul Bear Bryant museum. Best $2 I ever spent! We watched a movie all about him and learned lots about his life. We also got to see Nick Saban's shirt from the National Championship last year. As well as the trophy. Roll Tide!After all that we went to Wing's where we hung out for a whole 4 1/2 hours and ate and watched the game. The food was AMAZING, and the game was really exciting until the last quarter :( After leaving Tuscaloosa we went to Prattville to see my best friend Beth. I hadn't seen her in over two years and it was so fun. She's been renovating her house since the last time I was there and now it's finally finished and I was so happy I got to see how beautiful it is now. *After leaving Beth's we drove down to my Mawmaw and Pawpaw's (my mom's parents) where we spent the rest of our weekend. They have a new "vacation" home on the river and we had a lot of fun racing around on the golf carts and eating lots of food. The boys played football for a large chunk of the day, and they were all really sore afterwards! At night some of the cousins played games with us. And obviously James taught them some magic tricks :) Of course, no visit at Mawmaw's would be complete without Mawmaw doing something crazy. So here she is busting out a candie bra! We about died! November was a really fun month, and Thanksgiving was one of the best. I hadn't spent Thanksgiving with my family in 6 years, and I'm so thankful James was so willing to go. I'm excited for the rest of this month too - we have a fancy dinner this weekend, James' Christmas retreat for work next week, my company Christmas dinner the next week, and then Christmas in Iowa! All coming soon!

Happy Halloween!

It was nice having Halloween on a Sunday this year so James and I could spend it together... but since it was Sunday there wasn't much for us to do. We decided to celebrate after church with food and a movie-our favorites! I had seen Rachel Ray make these Sloppy Buffalo Joes a few weeks ago and have been wanting to make them ever since, so today we gave it a try. They were SO good, so easy and I recommend to all. The recipe is HERE. We also wanted to watch a festive movie, but since I'm absolutely terrified of anything scary, we chose an old children's classic. Originally we wanted to watch Pete's Dragon. However, since Redbox and Netflix have put every movie rental store out of business there was nowhere to rent it, and I was not about to pay $13.50 for a movie to watch on Halloween. So I bought The NeverEnding Story, our second choice. I think it was a pretty good pick for Halloween... it's pretty crazy. Then we made Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies, ate way too many, and watched The Office from this last week. I'm loving The Office this season, by the way. It's a lot funnier than it has been the last two seasons in my opinion. Anyways, now I need to give Lily a bath and do a little reading. Happy Halloween!

The Brent Event and More...

I apologize. I haven't been the good blogger that I should. I don't like posting only once a week, but we're pretty boring except for once a week (when James has a little time off), so what am I to do? Last weekend was The Brent Event. Jessica and her family came down Friday night and stayed with us so they could be there Saturday. Here are the children eating some grapes on the kitchen floor because that is the only child friendly place to eat in my house :/ James had to work Saturday, which he was so sad about, but here is everyone walking in the 1 mile family walk. I wanted to run the 5k, but all my friends are pregnant, so I had no one to run with. Good excuse huh? :)Here is how Lily traveled the mile. So spoiled! Brent and Kelly thanking everyone for being there. They are such an inspiration to me. Lily did really well with all of the people and noise. But it really wore her out and she was so scared that she had to be held the whole time. Later that night I met James at his office to watch the UFC fight. They always have little parties for them. I was sad Lesnar lost... the "brown pride" guy was annoying. Monday night we went to dinner with Forrest and Sarah and a couple that they're good friends with. We had fun and it was good to see them. You would think you would see people more often once you go from 1500 miles away to 30 miles... but no, we've only seen this Harris family 3 times in the 4 months we've been here! Sad. In other news, I finished Wuthering Heights and Animal Farm. I did enjoy Wuthering Heights a lot more than I thought I would. But old school English love stories are a little crazy for me. This one in particular reminded me a lot of Edgar Allan Poe... very dark. Entertaining nonetheless. And Animal Farm is a classic that illustrates all the problems with Stalin and the Soviet Union and that whole mess. Today I got two new books: Vanity Fair and The Picture of Dorian Gray. I'm just shocked at the number of books I haven't read that I apparently MUST before I die. Well at least two down... 98-ish to go! I've also moved up to #25 on the waiting list for The Hunger Games- that's 54 spots in 3 weeks! Ha! So I'm excited to have it soon.

Also, I want to start documenting my favorite things at particular points in time. For example, right now my favorite things are:

• "French Cafe" radio on Pandora (Obsessed!)


• These flats! Got them earlier this week and love them! The cashier at Old Navy even gave me $5 off just because I asked... thanks girl!
• Putting "Benefiber" into foods to lower the WW Points value :)

Just a few things I love right now.