The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Wow, I can not BELIEVE it's been almost a month since my last post! This shows how CRAZY BUSY our month has been....so so fun though! I will try to give a general re-cap- I've never been good at the "long story short stuff" though...it's usually long story long! :)

1. Thanksgiving was wonderful! We had all of our family at my parents and more food than ever! Ryan decided he would make the turkey this year- it tasted AMAZING, but the cooking/carving part- a disaster! We definitely learned lots of helpful tips to make next year a little easier! ;) This year, my close friend- Stacy, from Life Church, also joined our family for dinner. It was wonderful having her with us....she even stayed til the last people left and helped us wash and dry all the dishes! It was truly a blessing to our whole family to have her there!

Oh  forgot to mention- I ran a 5k Thanksgiving morning with my brother-in-law Brian, and his father-in-law, John. It was FREEEEZING...I mean BITTER cold! I was so bundled up it was ridiculous; so much so that when i got to about mile 2, i was burning up but couldnt de-layer because I pinned my number to the front of my fleece. haha- smart Kathleen, real smart. I was happy though- I improved my time by 2 minutes! :)

NOW TO DECEMBER: best Christmas ever already! Why? Ryan. That's why! Enough said.

*side note- i was so excited to have ALL presents bought and wrapped BY thanksgiving...the day after thanksgiving was spent converting our house into one big pile of lighted garland- ha! I don't even WANT to know what our electricity bill will be with all the lights we have on the outside AND inside our our house!

2. One of my favorite things we did this month was our Christmas card pictures with the very talented Abi Ruth, a photographer and close friend of mine from church. http://www.abiruth.com/
-We took a few pics in our living room in front of the tree...with Franklin of course, then went to the Devon ice rink downtown, then onto Chesapeake. This was the first time we ever had professional pictures taken, and it was SO fun. We especially enjoyed all the kissing pictures she "made" us take. ;) Just a fun, COLD, christmasy afternoon! Here are a few of our favorites:

3. Parties Parties Parties!!! First was a very fun Pampered Chef party I hosted for my best friend, Cassidy. We had LOTS of yummy food, and she made a strawberry tart that was PERFECTION! We had about 15 people come, and I was able to get Ryan (the cook in our home) lots of fun Christmas goodies he will love.

Next was our Life Group Christmas Party! Everyone came over in pajamas, brought their favorite christmas dish, and we played "yankee swap"! For those of you non-office fans, it's the same as Dirty Santa. It was a VERY intense game of Yankee Swap I might add....lots of stealing....made it very fun though! We ended up having Tamales (from Pecos, TX) and then lots of desserts....we were all on a sugar high so the night ended up being VERY fun! Any night with them is so great- we are so blessed that God gave us such a great group of other couples to "do life" with.

Then- the SWITCH Leader Christmas party! Another potluck...needless to say the diet has gone OUT THE WINDOW this month! haha. We had an incredible spread of turkey, ham, potatoes, green bean casserole, etc. We then played SWITCH trivia, SWITCH leader Bingo, then Christmas movie Charades. This became hilarious. For some reason I get competitive with this game. I am competitive at almost nothing...but charades. Because of this fact- things FLY out of my mouth that I can't quite catch in time. For instance, had you been at our table, you might have heard "Vomitting Christmas", "Death by Christmas", "Hanging Santa", and a few others. I promise I love Christmas! Like I sad.....flying out of my mouth. It was definitely a great night with some wonderful people. This ministry has been another GIFT from the Lord in our lives this past year. Without SWITCH we wouldnt have our Life Group, and I wouldnt have made some of the best friends I've had in my life. Here are some pics from that night:

Michelle Brown- LOVE this girl...She and her husband Jeremy are in our Life Group

WONDERFUL women: Megann, Stacy, and Whitney...these girls are seriously THE BEST!

Anna Light, and her mom- Robin Meadows...These two have truly changed my life in so many ways. Anna is my trainer and Robin is my mentor

The Next party was the Oster/Goodman Christmas Party! I actually got to plan this as Andrew Oster's executive assistant. It was (to sound very cheesy) a magical night. The party was at Andrew's neighbor's home in Rose Creek, Nonna's catered, there were lights everywhere, heaters outside around the pool, live music...truly a perfect evening.

OH AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST: MY EARLY CHRISTMAS PRESENT...my 2nd wedding band!!!! I have a video of him giving this to me- it's pretty funny! I was screaming and jumping up and down and accidentally dropped the camera- fortunately, it's still in one peice! ;) I had NO IDEA this was coming though- he said he had something for me to go with my outfit and then pulled out "the box"...the same color box I remember from almot 2 years ago! He is truly the BEST HUSBAND in the world.

Well, like I said long story LONG....that's me I guess! :) Thanks for those of you who actually read ALL this. I will close with one thing- last night we were settling in for the evening about to fold 9 loads of laundry. (that's another story- our garage and backyard filled with sewage thanks to a HUGE whole in our main line. That will be fun and expensive to fix next year....so laundry couldn't be done for 2 weeks!)

We ordered Chinese and were about to start a movie when Ryan paused it, grabbed my hand and started praying...he prayed for us to remember, in the midst of the fun/crazy/busyness of this month what the true reason for Christmas is....celebrating the birth of our Saviour. It was the perfect gentle reminder I needed to get my focus back on Jesus. He truly is the "lifter of our heads".....and He often uses Ryan to re-focus me!

This is what I fell asleep to:         :)

Merry Christmas to you all!