Thanksgiving 2016!

I had a total "mom fail" and barely took any pictures of our Thanksgiving, but I guess that means I was enjoying the moment :)

Little man kept up with tradition and ended up with an ear infection right before we left town, so we were a little bit haggard by the time we rolled into Nani and Papa's house Thursday night.

We were able to enjoy a great lunch with Mom's side of the family, and Nolan seemed to be in good spirits despite only being on an antibiotic for one day.  The weather was so beautiful so we were able to spend a good amount of time outside.

We made it to Hickory around 4:00, which gave us some good time to chill before the rest of the clan arrived :)  Our tradition has become to have Andre and Sammi and family up too, which is great and Nolan always talks about seeing his cousins for this trip!  I was able to rally and even though I had just started eating after my food poisoning from the weekend before, I made it and was almost back to normal by the time we headed out to shop that night.

The girls (me, Paige, Sammi and Bella) trooped out to go shopping after Nolan went to sleep, and scored some great stuff even though it was crowded!  The lines moved pretty fast and we were home by 11:00 or so (thank goodness I had Nani to watch the babe and get up with him when he woke up at 5:00 a.m.!)  This was his first night [almost] sleeping through the night, so that was a good start!

We spent the rest of the weekend alternating between parks, shopping, and cooking.  I got to cook everyone a big Mediterranean meal on Saturday night, and it was such a joy.  I love cooking and entertaining and it was great to be able to focus on the food and have Nolan completely entertained and having fun.  It turned out really good, so I think I get the honor to cook more at Christmas!

Where he goes, Daddy follows :)  Even with a hurt back!

 

 

We ended up being able to catch up on sleep and had a great time.  This is a great tradition we have started and I am so thankful to Nani and Papa for hosting us every year!  Even more so, I am SO thankful for all of our blessings; we may have stresses, or worry about money, or feel sick or just have bad days, but the blessings we share are far more than we deserve and there will always be family and God - what more do we need?!

A Quick Mini-Vacation

Anthony and I snuck away this past weekend for a quick little "Pre-Holiday Madness" trip.  Or, a "Late Anniversary Trip."  There are a million titles I could use for it!  Basically, it started out wonderful and ended pretty darn terrible!

Let me back up a bit.  We were able to get a hotel for free in Myrtle Beach, since my mom had some extra points left over from one of her timeshares.  This already was a terrific perk!  We didn't care that it was Myrtle Beach even - just a free place to go with just the two of us was enough!  We ended up having to change to an inland hotel a few weeks after Hurricane Matthew, but again, we didn't care at all!  The hotel we ended up having was actually in a pretty good location (near a mall, shops, close to each highway, etc.)

I only took pictures with my cell phone this whole trip!

We left on a Friday right after dropping Nolan off at school and hit the road.  We took 5 million back roads to get there, but the drive was very nice and it allowed Anthony to rest a little bit; he has been having some very serious back pain lately, so resting has been difficult for him.

We made it down well before we could check into our room, so the closest mall was on our agenda first :)  We spent a few hours walking around, shopping, eating lunch and Anthony got a good massage from one of the little guys in the mall.  We decided to check into our hotel and rest some before heading back out for dinner.  I had seen a Michael's and Homegoods nearby so I convinced him to go with me :)

We spent a little while shopping before we decided it was time for dinner!  We had no idea where to go, but based on some recommendations from a coworker of mine we settled on a little Italian place nearby.  It ended up being a perfect spot for dinner and we had a nice quiet dinner, just the two of us.

Saturday we had a yummy breakfast at Bob Evan's restaurant before heading up 17 to the outlet mall.  We didn't want to do too much shopping so Anthony didn't have to walk too much with his back, but I couldn't be that close to some good outlets and not check them out.  We found some good deals, but were really more excited to try and spend some time on the beach than shopping.  We headed back to the hotel to change clothes and make a gameplan for the afternoon.

We changed clothes and decided to head to the beach for lunch and a walk by the water.  It turned out that the weather was beautiful and very warm, so it was the perfect day to eat lunch outside and walk to beach!  We found a place right on the water near the ferris wheel for lunch.  Afterwards, we walked on the pier and walked up and down the beach for an hour or so.  The weather was plenty warm, but the water was FREEZING.  I don't know how there were actually kids and people in the water playing (must have been crazy), but my toes were frozen just from walking in it!

I love this picture of him!

 

After we had our fill of sandy toes, we headed back to the hotel to rest up and get ready to meet Angel and his wife for dinner that night.  We were surprised they just so happened to be in town the same weekend we were, so we needed to get in some fun while we could!

 

 

This is the best picture of I have of me before my night pretty much got ruined.  Somehow, I guess I ate something horribly bad at dinner, because about 30 minutes after dinner we had to leave because my stomach was hurting so bad.  We got back to the hotel, and let's just say that after 1:00 a.m. things went BAD.  I was so horribly sick that I didn't sleep all night and Anthony had to pack up our hotel room the next morning and drive us all the way home.  I was so sick I couldn't even sit up straight so we had to remove the car seat and I laid down in the backseat the entire.way.home.  We got home and I was so happy to see Nolan but I had to get back in the bed and stayed there most of the rest of the day.

 

Needless to say, our vacation didn't end how we wanted it to, but I told Anthony that it made me love him even more.  He took such good care of me and Nolan while I was down for the count, that I was so thankful that I have him on my team.  Next time, if a restaurant is empty on a Saturday night, I will remember my lesson and GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! :/

A First: NCSU Basketball!

My firm hosted a drawing for their suite passes this past weekend to an NC State basketball game, and I thought Nolan would love it!  We have been to the suite before, and learned that this is the way to go with a busy three year old, so I was thrilled when we won the tickets.

 

 

The suite is right at half-court, so we couldn't have asked for a better view.  We got there soon after the game started, and Nolan was mesmerized!  He is taking basketball classes at his school, so he was excited to see what an actual game looked like.

 



 

Turns out we learned two things this day: (1) he will stay in his seat the entire game; and (2) he LOVES the cheerleaders and dancers.  No joke - he must have asked 100 times why the girls weren't "dancing" when they were on the sidelines and not performing.  It was hilarious!  I really think his favorite thing about the game were the girls!  Whatever worked, he stayed in his seat and did not budge the entire game.

 

 

He tried his best to learn the Wolfpack hand sign, and he almost mastered it!  My USC alumni would be ashamed :)

 





The Wolfpack ended up with a win, and we all had a great time.  It's pretty nice to have a whole suite all to yourself, and our parking spot was within 10 feet of the entrance.  We felt like pretty cool people - if only for the day :)

He is my King of the Game, for sure :)

Halloween 2016!

Halloween this year was so much fun, albeit a bit hectic since it actually fell on a Monday this year (I mean, can't we make all kid-centric holidays on weekends?!)

I was able to make it home in time to get Nolan changed and Ollie and G headed over to man the house while we Trick-or-Treated and to hand out candy.  Mom was sweet enough to make us a fantastic dinner, so we had plenty to eat when we got home.

 

Nolan and Kaleb in their costumes :)

 

We decided to let Nolan loose in the Walmart aisles this year to pick out his own costume.  I figured he would have an opinion on what he wanted to be this year, and it was a fun little outing after breakfast to let him run around and look at the costumes.  Thankfully, we found a Spiderman one that fit him, and he only wore it one whole day before actual Halloween :)

 

Mom was a true hero and made the BEST Batman costume to go along with Nolan.  I hate we didn't get any good pictures of the two of them together, but Nolan just thought she was the best thing ever!

 

Our neighbors joined us along with their cousins for some candy hunting.  We loaded everyone up in the back of Anthony's truck and hit up the long loop of houses across from our street (a/k/a the "big" houses).  Since the houses are pretty far apart, this worked well as we could park the truck every little bit, the kids would hit up a few houses, and we would drive down to the next ones.  We only had to make three stops, and the kids had their fill and we were ready to get them home and ready for dinner!

 

 

 Loaded up and ready to go!  We had Spiderman, a pirate, a skeleton and a cute witchy princess :)

 

We headed back home and spent the rest of the night eating with Ollie and G and handing out candy to the Trick-or-Treaters that made their way to our house.  I am pretty sure Nolan got just as much of a kick out of handing out candy as he did getting it!  We ran out of our last piece of candy just as we were preparing to turn the lights out and put Nolan to bed, so I call that a success all the way around!