Recap on November

So since I didn't write about this, figured I would:

For Thanksgiving we went to the Evans' and Clark's - and had 2 meals within 1 hour.  Ahhh, its sad that we really love all this food and yet can't eat that much of it.  Jan's was nice with Jeff and Andy and a few other neighbors and relatives, but we couldn't stay too long.  We made mashed potatoes that morning and took them with us to the Clarks.  They were a HIT, so I've decided I inherited my Dad's whipped potato jeans :)  First try too!  We stayed at the Clarks most of the night playing, or looking at Black Friday ads (yeah that was me).  We drew names for Christmas gifts and headed home to sleep so we could get up for a few quick Black Friday things.

First off, I was against the whole "let's have Black Friday on Thursday at 8pm!"  Yeah, since I was a kid, Black Friday was on early Friday morning.  But for some reason the last couple years it has creeped to Thursday.  Besides that it sucks for employees, my problem is that I want to
1) enjoy my Thanksgiving, watch a movie and sleep well
2) get up early with only the very devoted shoppers rather than the young crowd that was there last year
3) not have to wait in line during my Thanksgiving meal
4) and just have the same tradition as usual
So it kind of made me mad, especially since our Black Friday last year wasn't too successful plus we had a 2 hour line and the DVD player we bought was on sale for less the next week!  (oh yeah we totally returned ours and saved even more)  Friday we got up at like 7am to check a few stores and see what was there since we really didn't need anything.  BUT, we did find Christmas lights 1/2 off wahoo!  And we got the BEST gift this year from my mom and Black Friday - an electric piano!!!  It really is awesome, I have missed being able to play and sing for all these years.

And then we did the Benihana tradition with the Clarks - pictures of it all below.  Surprisingly I don't think anything traumatic happened that day with them all, but good food of course!

And lastly we always decorate for Christmas during the Thanksgiving weekend, this year was no different :)  And we had a lot to put out so it took us a couple days.  Pictures up next.