November and December always fly by! Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years are all so jam-packed close together that the end of the year goes by so fast.
Well November Brad and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary! I worked and Brad had school, but the next evening Brad surprised me by arranging for a baby-sitter so we could go to dinner at The Pitt in Raleigh (good ol Carolina BBQ). It was delicious and so fun to go out just the two of us. We got through dinner pretty fast (it was a Tuesday after all) so we headed across the street from the restaurant to a Videri Chocolate Factory. We got to see how they make their chocolate, sample all the different varieties and we bought a bar and one truffle (the most expensive bar I have bought in my life but it is a yummy 60 cocoa salty chocolate).
For Thanksgiving we drove up to Northern Virginia to spend the holiday with Brad's Aunt and Uncle and the two boys still at home. We had so much fun with Mike, Karen, Johnny and Will and Tacy loved the boys (especially "Jogey"). We spent Black Friday in the capitol doing a family version of Amazing Race around the Lincoln Memorial, WWII memorial, Korean War Memorial, and Vietnam War Memorial looking for random little things you don't normally look for at DC. It was freezing! Tacy would not keep gloves on her hands so they were so red. We were there with all of Aunt Karen's family and one of her sisters offered the use of her scarf to wrap around Tacy's hands. We had fun, even if it was cold.
Brad finished up his finals the first week of December and survived/passed them all! He has been able to stay home with Tacy all of the month after his finals so the two of the have had a lot of bonding time. I love coming home from work seeing them playing! School starts back up next week and this month was the longest break Brad gets off for the next 2 years so we have enjoyed the time while it lasts.
Brad's mom came out to visit us for a few days Dec. 11-15th. Tacy loved spending time with "Maga". While she was here we got to go to the Apex Nativity at our stake center by the Raleigh Temple where there were over 900 nativity sets displayed and different choirs singing carols all day. We all loved it! Tacy loved sitting and just listening/watching the high school choir sing. She also loved walking around looking for baby Jesus. We have been talking a lot about our Savior and how the Christmas season is all about celebrating the glorious birth of Jesus. Tacy has loved Jesus for a long time and now she loves baby Jesus too. It is so cute when she asks to watch a baby Jesus video (thank you mormon.org and Mormon Messages for all the Christmas videos). I have three nativities but none of them are toddler friendly, so we spent a Family Home Evening coloring a paper nativity for Tacy to play with. Needless to say they are very colorful! Tacy loves arranging all the characters and animals and finding baby Jesus and Jesus' mommy (Mary) and daddy (Joseph).
In fact Tacy is at an age where everything must have a mommy and daddy. Anytime she deems something a baby she then tells us what is the baby's mom and dad. We were at the park on Saturday enjoying our 60 degree weather and Tacy and I found lots of acorns. Tacy was examining them and picking up some and started calling them "baby corns". So then she pointed out to Brad and I the daddy corn and mommy corn. It's adorable even if not true. I did explain briefly that the trees were actually the acorns mommy but Tacy did not seem to listen to that idea.
Christmas was fun because even though we stayed here in NC instead of going to see family, we got to spend lots of time with friends. There are a lot of people here we have met at church who like us do not live by family because of jobs or they are also in grad school. We had a friend Christmas Eve dinner with 2 other couples (6 adults and 3 kids).
Brad cooked a turkey - which was an experience because we have never cooked one before. Brad wanted to try injecting flavor but the herb and garlic mariande was too thick for the needle so Brad had to strain out the herbs before he could inject the liquid base. Then he injected Carolina BBQ sauce in one leg and left the other leg plain. I made stuffing for the turkey, jello, salad, and cookies. However, with all the fuss of cutting up the turkey, we completely forgot everything in the fridge. Luckily there was enough food at the dinner that the salad and jello were not missed.
Christmas was a fun/adventurous morning. I wanted to make Christmas breakfast with my dad's delicious waffle recipe, sausage, and grapefruit. We bought cool whip and berries to put on the waffles and had syrup already. Well the waffle iron was not seeming to warm up all the way. I thought maybe the ready light wouldn't come on until batter was cooked, so I put some in the iron and waiting another 10 minutes. The waffles did not cook at all. So I then had to clean out the iron while Brad took a look at it and deemed it dead. So waffles turned into pancakes. They were still delicious. Tacy ate 3 with just butter, I used the cool whip and berries and Brad used jam (we could not find our syrup).
Then we shocked Tacy when we told her that she could open presents now. After so long of not being able to touch them she was pretty excited. She had so much fun ripping paper off every present (even if it was not her own). If she uncovered a box, she would move on to the next present, being too impatient to wait to open the box. We had to keep stopping her to get her to finish opening each present. She got a lot between us, aunts, and her grandparents. It was so fun watching her excitement with each gift. We bought Tacy and Elsa dress, which she has wanted to wear every day since, and a kitchen which she uses to cook us lots of meals. My sister got Tacy a cabbage patch doll which Tacy loves to carry around. She also got 3 barbies from each grandma and one of Brad's sisters. So we play a lot.
We had Christmas dinner at the church with 6-7 different young families. I brought rolls and the forgotten salad from the night before. There was once again lots of food. Tacy had fun running around with other kids. It was nice to spend the holiday with friends and not have to cook everything alone.
That has been our busy holiday. We are finishing the holidays with my parents arriving tomorrow. Tacy is loving seeing all of her grandparents. We are enjoying it too.
Oh and Brad grew out a neatly trimmed beard and mustache for Movember. He had fun slowly shaving it off the first few days of December during finals.
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