Thanksgiving Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving day with David's mom's side of the family in Knightdale, NC (just outside Raleigh) We of course stuffed ourselves with a delicious dinner and then drove back to our house with David's mom, Jane. It has now become a Thanksgiving tradition that she comes back with us after dinner to spend the weekend in Greensboro. And what has also become a Thanksgiving tradition for us is to go to the movies Thanksgiving night. This time we saw such a cute movie. It's call August Rush and it's all about how this little boy in an orphanage becomes a child music prodigy and "follows the music" to find his family. It has a great score and was a really "feel good" movie. I would definitley recommend it.

The following day, known as Black Friday, also the biggest shopping day of the year, most people I know elect to stay out of the crowds and don't go into town that day. But not us! We braved the mobs in all the stores and shopped for 9 hours! Yes, I was getting very weary halfway through the day, but Jane just seemed to get more energized with each store we went in. Although we did have fun and got some really great deals too. She bought both me and David all our Christmas gifts in that one day! But one other thing she bought for us that I am excited about is a cute little pre-lit Christmas tree and decorations to go on it! To understand why that would be exciting for me, let me give you some perspective. When David and I got married 3 Decembers ago, I bought us a tiny little tree just to have something for our first Christmas since we were moving and things were so unsettled for a while. Here's that tree that we have made do with for 2 years. Now that's all that I was going to have for the 3rd year until Jane so generously got us the perfect sized tree for our condo. We set it up in the window, so from the street below it actually looks like a really big tree, but even inside it is very pretty. Here it is in all it's glory!So we stayed up and put up the tree and decorated it after shopping all day. But as you can see, it was definitely worth it.

On Saturday, in the past we have done some sort of tour, exhibition, museum etc. This year we decided we would try out the Reynolda House in Winston Salem. Honestly it was ok, but I wasn't very impressed. The house I didn't think was very pretty and wasn't really preserved as a lived in house all over on the inside. The living room was preserved, and the basement with game rooms and bar, but the bedrooms were just turned into art museum rooms. Here are a couple of pictures from it. The prettiest part was the greenhouse.

So since this excursion didn't make the top of the list, I will post a few pictures of where we went last year. We had a blast on our tour of the Chinqua-Penn Plantation last year. The house was very pretty and it was decorated nicely for Christmas (which the Reynolda house was not) Also the grounds were much prettier and there seemed to be much more to see. We had a guided tour around the house and all the rooms were preserved just the way that it had been long ago. Hopefully next year we will find somewhere as nice as this to go for our annual excursion.

But besides the Reynolda house not meeting our expectations, we had a great time anyway. After we left Winston Salem, we went out for a nice dinner followed by tea and dessert at my parents house.

The 3 of us went out for a big breakfast on Sunday morning just before Jane left to head back to the beach. The weekend seemed to fly by, but we definitley had a great time with her. Thanks, Jane! You're the best mother-in-law a girl could ask for! We love you!

Fall Leadership Retreat

David and I just got back from a phenomenal weekend. Our business team pulled a large group of us together for a leadership where not only did we hear from some of the people moving on in business, but we also heard from a hilarious, entertaining, yet very effective marriage and family minister, Joe McGee. We got to do a couple of other really cool things this past weekend too, so I'll just start from the top. First of all, as you probably know by now, I love to "get away", whatever it is we are doing. So it was just nice to have a couple of nights in a nice hotel room away from home and spend time together, but it was also nice to be there with our friends and business partners and spend time with them. The first night before everything got kicked off, we went to a dessert reception just for the leaders. There's me and Kelly catching up. (Notice my new hair cut and color - my fall look for this year :) Then we had some awesome teaching that night and even got to bed relatively early. The next day was jam packed. We had a morning session, then a bunch of us went to the mall for lunch and to stretch our legs. Then it was back to the room for a quick nap before the evening session. However, I also took advantage of the time to visit the room of one of my friends, Karen, who just had her 1st baby 2 weeks ago. Here's me with little Faith Victoria (doesn't she just look like she could be mine :) She was soo cute and very expressive for only 2 weeks old. By expressive I don't mean crying or fussing - she didn't do that at all - but she smiled and squirmed a lot. That was very cool to get to see her - an added bonus.

The evening session was incredible. The marriage/family minister spoke and had us all in stitches while trying to write notes fast enough to keep up with his "speed-talking". If you have never heard Joe McGee speak, you should definitely check him out. He is excellent. You can click here to see his site - http://www.joemcgeeministries.com/. And here he is talking to us.

Once the evening session was over a group of us went out to a local restaurant for some late night pizza and discussion of the weekend so far. We did get a late night that night, but it was defintely worth it. Plus we got to sleep in a little and got up for a big buffet breakfast before the church service.

< - Random side note - Tonia and I definitely have good taste in jewelry and color schemes - here we are as almost twins : ) - >

The service was awesome. It started out with praise and worship playing over the sound system, but accompanied by a rather famous violinist. (unfortunately I didn't get any pictures because of the lighting) She was absolutely amazing!!! Her music was so moving that at times I could hardly sing. It just made me cry. If you are into violin music, or even if you aren't, you should check out her site. http://www.lorijeansmith.com/. I had to get one of her cd's before we left. Wow! It's good.

Anyway, Joe McGee spoke again Sunday morning and was excellent again. But one of the coolest parts is that we got to have a special luncheon again with just the leaders and Joe McGee and his wife. After we had all eaten our fill of the delicious food, we had an extra hour with him that the rest of the people in the conference room didn't get. That was a another added blessing.

Here are some of us having fun at the luncheon and Joe McGee talking to us there.

We finished up the weekend at about 3 o'clock, and then came home for another nap. Then that evening, we had a couple of guys over and talked and watched the movie, The Ultimate Gift. Now, if you haven't seen that, it is defintely a "must see" (after you read the book, of course).

All in all, we had an awesome weekend.