see ya, november!

So the long-awaited Thanksgiving holiday was everything I'd dreamed it would be-- long and relaxing and full of family and food. Really, what more could a girl want? I had so much fun playing hostess and Statham Tour Guide Extraordinaire to my grandparents and dad. We spent Wednesday through Sunday morning in Augusta and did little more than eat, sleep (I took 2-3 hour naps EVERY SINGLE AFTERNOON. How I survived work today without one is a miracle), chat, and hang out/clean at my brother's new house. He closed on his first home on Wednesday morning! Similar to us, he picked a nice, new-ish (2005) foreclosure in a very nice neighborhood about 5 minutes from our parents' house (haaa suckaaahhh) (just kidding, I would love to live 5 minutes from my parents. Seriously). The house is in great shape in general, but it was DIRRRRTY! As in...heavy indoor smokers who left the place REEKING of their vice...silly string everywhere, including the TWENTY FOOT CEILINGS in the great room. Umm...had to hire professionals with scaffolding to clean up that hot mess. But other than that, he's going the DIY route and took advantage of lots of fam in town to help out!!

So here's his new place!! Very nice-- much larger than our house...but then, so is his income. Ha!



Here's my pretty mama, vacuuming baseboards.

Jake patching holes in the kitchen as Poppie supervises and takes care of Goliath.

When we weren't over there, we just hung out at the parents' house. Whenever Lola took a break from running like a mad dog in the backyard, which wasn't often, she would take the opportunity to look super cute in the beanbag. Once, Goliath joined her-- this is the closest I've ever seen the two of them without World War III starting!!

So I thoroughly enjoyed my six days off. Unlike my co-worker, who waltzed in to lunch today proclaiming how rested and ready to work she was after the break, I could barely convince myself to crawl out of bed today. I am counting the minutes until Dec. 23, which is the next day I get off! Luckily I have other things between now and then to look forward to...starting with DECORATING for CHRISTMAS!! Wahoo! And SHOPPING! I decided to take advantage of our sad empty "nursery" and make it happy by setting up a wrapping station in there! That way I have a nice space to wrap gifts and don't have to put everything away every time I wrap something. I'm excited to start using it!

And, just in the interest of Keeping it Real here, this is what my guest bedroom currently looks like. I'm horrified to admit that I have let it come to this, but I've been going through all my decorations and putting up what I can (we don't have our tree yet) and somehow it's just not the neatest of procedures. But I don't want to put it all back away because I hope to get our tree this week! So this is the messiest that room will ever be....and I'm putting it here for all to see. And I hope you like my poetry. :)

Well, time to get back to decorating and listening to my beloved Mariah Carey Christmas CD. That is definitely Matt's favorite part of the Christmas season...the man GROANED as I pulled out my Christmas CDs!! What a Scrooge!!!