Sweet Potatoes, Snowmen, and Baby Jesus all in One Weekend

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was so nice to see family and friends and eat yummy food. We have a lot to be thankful for this year. We're all healthy and we were blessed with Carissa Faith this year. A year ago I was going through a very difficult and long pregnancy. It is amazing to me that she is actually here and healthy. She turned 8 months old on Thanksgiving Day.

I also really enjoyed Black Friday shopping. Woo hoo! Me, Aunt Angie, Aunt Patty, and my cousins, Andrea, and Abby, left town at 4 a.m. and headed north. We made it to Kohl's by 5 a.m. and got some awesome deals there. Then we headed to Wal-Mart and made it out alive. I didn't think it was too bad this year, crowd-wise. I think we timed it well and went to each store about an hour after they opened. After that, we had a yummy breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Delicious! I love the Black Friday energy. It's so exciting!

We got our tree up this weekend. That made Maleah very happy. It looks really pretty even if she does keep rearranging the ornaments. Every time I look at it I notice that it looks slightly different. She wants to hang as many as she can on each branch at her eye level. So there are a lot of ornaments at about 45 inches high. Oh well. As long as she is enjoying the tree and is excited about Christmas, I really don't care. As we were decorating it, she found the beauty in each and every ornament. "Oh Mommy, this is so pretty and glittery" or "I love this one, it's my favorite" or "This one is so cute". I think they're all her favorites. There is one ornament that says "Baby's First Christmas" and has a picture of Maleah in it. It's hard to tell if it's Maleah or Carissa though. They look so much alike!

Maleah gets to go to her sitter's house tomorrow while I go to the dentist. She loves to go there and is very excited to see her friends and Juanita. Tomorrow is Juanita's 80th birthday and she is still watching kids. She is one of those people that doesn't look her age or act her age. She seems so much younger! She loves the kids as if they were her own grandkids and Maleah loves her. She used to go there full-time when I worked but now she just goes occasionally. It's wonderful to have a trust-worthy sitter that you can call at a moment's notice. Carissa is not staying at Juanita's tomorrow but instead gets to go with me to the dentist! Poor baby woke up with a cold today and has a super runny nose. She sneezes like every five minutes! I hate to send her and spread the cold around. Plus I don't want her to be fussy for Juanita because she's not used to staying there and she doesn't feel good on top of that. That's enough to throw even the happiest baby for a loop. But lucky for me and Carissa, my friend Nikki is riding along with me to the dentist and is going to watch Carissa while I am at my appointment.

So, what happened this week that was funny? Well, Maleah has a memory like an elephant. Earlier today we were talking about a tv show and I couldn't remember one of the character's names. Maleah thought about it for awhile. She hadn't seen the show in about a year probably. Finally she said "I used to pretend I was her when we were on vacation in Florida last year. Oh yeah, her name is Megan". Then I started thinking about it and now I very clearly remember her pretending to be Megan in August of 2008. I think she also remembers the day she was born. : )

I wore a new shirt on Friday night and she told me I looked beautiful but then said "Is that maternity?". Umm, no. Thanks. I'm just still fat from the last baby. Does anybody know how much a tummy tuck costs?

We have a nativity set sitting in the living room. I walked in one day and Maleah was rubbing the baby Jesus and saying in a baby-talk voice "Oh, you're a sweet little baby, Jesus. You're a cutie pie! Yes, you are!". She sounded as if she was talking to Carissa but wasn't. I wish I would've had a video camera of her talking to Jesus.

Carissa is still not crawling. Not much new with her other than the cold. She sure loved her Thanksgiving meals though. She especially loved Aunt Kay's sweet potatoes. Here's a pic of her enjoying them. We brought home some leftovers of the sweet potatoes and she has already eaten all of them. I think I need that recipe. If any of you start to notice that she has an orange glow about her please let me know right away. Thanks!

Jason got Thanksgiving off for the first time in four years. He was able to enjoy a long weekend and had three days off in a row. That is practically unheard of around here. It was so nice having him here and awake. He was able to get some things done that he needed to and we had lots of family time.

Maleah gets to start her advent calendars this week and she can't wait. One of her "calendars" is a countdown box with 25 little doors on it. Each day she gets to open a door and gets a little present in it. And when I say little, I mean little. If anyone knows of any cool, cheap gifts that are smaller than 2 inches, let me know. Every year I have a hard time finding things to put in it. When she asked me if I could give her a hint as to what her presents will be, I told her that I wasn't sure yet what she was going to get. She told me to just "go get some of that stuff, you know, that you put in pinatas". Good idea. But really that stuff is just a bunch of junk and yucky candy. I might resort to that though.

I know the next few weeks are going to fly by! I love this time of year! Oh yes, and by the way, Maleah is still playing "Christmas Morning". My mom gave her a light up little snowman that she keeps hiding around the house or wraps in Kleenexes and then pretends to find it. She gets so excited that Santa has been here and left her a gift. And each time is as much fun as the first! Here's a pic of her and her little snowman from Grandma.