Giving Thanks!

We went to my parent's house for Thanksgiving.  We had a great time, and I did most of the cooking, with the help of Jill and David.  We missed my two brother n laws that celebrated Thanksgiving elsewhere.

About to eat!

I made my first turkey!  Although, it was a little too dry.

David made his own dessert

My 97 year old grandmother was able to come up for the day.

David did a lot of this while we were there!

Yes, we did make a gingerbread house.  I can't understand why David didn't want to contribute, so he took pictures.

On Thursday night, or Friday morning, at 12 am, my dad, David and I went out to some black Friday sales.  The stores were INSANE.  It was impossible for us to find parking and every store was so crowded it was uncomfortable.  We went to Wal-Mart, Target, Kohls, and drove by Best Buy.  Even after opening at midnight, Best Buy was so crowded that there was a line around the entire outside of the store. 

As always, it was hard to leave.  Holidays go by so quickly and it's always hard to say goodbye.  We had a great Thanksgiving!

It all went down!

We finally got our wood floors installed on Saturday!  They are in the formal living room and dining room.  We were not sad to see the carpet go. 

Here are some before and after pictures of the formal living room.  This room will eventually be our office, that is why there is nothing in there, because we have nothing to put in there yet:)

The wood was delivered on Wednesday



Starting to remove the carpet!



What a difference!

I can't wait to get furniture in this room!

On to the dining room!

Almost all the furniture is out!

Carpet is gone

New Floors!

Ready for Thanksgiving!

My First 5k!!

I ran my first 5k this morning!  My time was 34:37, which I realize for "runners" isn't great, but for me it was!  It was so cold outside this morning, but as soon as I got going, I warmed up.  The race was for Girls on Track.  David was a good sport and got out of bed at 6:30 to go watch me and take pictures.  I feel inspired now and can't wait to run another race. 

                                                                       Before the race

I did it!

Just finished!



Go Hokies!!!

Last night we went to the Virginia Tech vs. Georgia Tech game.  We had such a great time, but it was FREEZING.  The hokies won, which made it even more fun.  After taking the Marta downtown, we ate the Varsity, which was packed, and then went to the stadium.  Our seats were decent and luckily in the Virginia Tech section.  The final score was 37-26.  We got home around midnight, which for me was late, seeing as I am usually in bed by 9pm;)  But, the hokies don't play in Atlanta often, so the lack of sleep was worth it.

The Hokie Bird!

Soooo Cold!



Players after the game

Fall

Yesterday we went for a hike up Kennesaw Mountain.  We have been there a few times before, but it was so pretty with the leaves changing colors.  It was perfect weather for a hike!

There is a house in Buckhead that we saw last year that goes OVERBOARD with the Halloween blow-ups.  This year they did the same thing, so I stopped and took pictures on my phone.  These pictures do not do the amount of decorations they have justice.  They do the same thing for Christmas.



Work to be Done

Our formal living, which we plan to make the office, is finally painted.  David had a few days off work and painted it.  We chose a gray, but it turned out more blue. 

We also got some quotes this past week on plantation shutters, wood floors and painted trim.  Everything was actually reasonably priced.   The carpet isn't in bad shape, but we prefer wood floors.  The trim is beige, way too dark for us.  We could paint the trim ourselves, but because there is dental molding in the living room, dining room and foyer, that would be a LOT of work.

We decided we are going to get the hardwood floors, trim and plantation shutters done in living room, dining room, and foyer first.  After that we will move to the back of the house.  We will also be getting plantation shutters in the laundry room since that window is in the front of the house.  Our goal is to have all this done by Christmas!

Ghost

Today was perfect!!  The weather was so nice that we spent the afternoon doing things outside in the yard.  If you are facing our house from the street, on the right side are massive azalea bushes.  They take up so much space, and are so big that we had difficulty trimming them this summer because we couldn't get to the middle of them.  We knew we wanted to get rid of them, but every time we started working on it this summer it was too hot to get much done.  Today we started hacking away.  David worked for about an hour and a half and got most of the bushes that were against our house taken down.  However, he probably only removed 1/5 of the bushes.  Our plan is to work a little bit on them each weekend. 

While David worked on getting rid of the bushes, I decorated for Halloween.  Can you find the ghost in my picture?  (Ignore the dead bushes on the right hand side, that is part of the ones we removed today.)