thanksgiving festivities

I love my family - both sides. I would hang out with my family or in-laws all the time, if I could. So, this year when trying to decide how to handle Thanksgiving, we decided to celebrate it with both sides. It was great! We had Thanksgiving dinner with Jeff's side of the family in St. Charles MO - the traditional turkey dinner and then the traditional Chamberlain sides (homemade mac 'n cheese, corn bread, green bean casserole) and then did desserts w/my side of the family that evening in Troy, IL (cobbler, pecan pie, turtle pumpkin pie and cheese curls. we try to include cheese curls at every major event). It was so much fun. Jeff's side is notorious for teasing - if you can breathe, you will be teased. And between the 3 siblings, there are 7 kids from ages 1-6, so it's fun watching them play (and fight). I can't really give justice to it, but being with the Chamberlains is always fun. My side is notorious for speaking in movie quotes, or tv sitcom quotes. I pretty much only quote from the same shows or movies because I'm not really a movie kind of person (i don't like to sit still that long), but it's always entertaining listening to conversations and trying to figure out which sentences are original or quotes. we also love to play games. Well, I use "we" loosely - the sisters and my mom like games. The husbands, and my dad do not. My brother can go either way, depending on his mood. So, we played a fun game - Loaded Questions - which had us laughing. Good times.
I spent the night at my sister's, sans kids, and went shopping w/my dad and brother-in-law on Friday - that was fun. I actually didn't do so badly - I had a list, and stuck to it (for the most part). The highlight of my trip was the $50 Bissel steam mop. You know you've gotten old when a steam mop excites you.
But, all in all, it was a fun weekend. We put up the trees (we have two - one for me and one for the kids), i pulled out my christmas decorations, and we watched the neighbors put up christmas lights. I think they finally talked jeff into doing it too, so hopefully we'll have lights up this season. And now we're just counting down the days until Christmas! Yay!