I swear I'm not dead

I know...I know...It's been awhile, so sue me. We've actually been quite busy, so it's not like I've just been sitting around eatin bon bons, regardless of what my husband thinks. We went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. That was fun....long drive, with Sarah deciding not to sleep until nearly 4am...but fun. It was nice for Emma to see her little friends Ryan & Austin again. And Sarah had a great time following Justin around and generally wreaking havoc along with everyone else. Tiana & I did our annual "Get-up-at-the-butt-crack-of-dawn-why-do-we-do-this-to-ourselves-every-year" shopping trip, which was punctuated by going back home to deal with a fevery, lethargic, and anti-food & drink Sarah. It was made even more exciting by the fact that we had Thanksgiving dinner the day AFTER Thanksgiving. We drove down there on Wednesday night, it's a 14 hour drive, you do the math. Ok, so I'll tell you we got there at 7am, not entirely up for cooking all day. PLus, I felt bad that I wouldn't have been there early to help Tiana. So, we figured, what's the harm in putting it off for a day. The kids won't notice. And Jeff certainly didn't care. He got his hot wings that he wanted.
With Robert being in Afghanistan, it was up to Jeff to carve the turkey. Ryan helped, and it was really neat to see. The weather was ok, chilly the first day or so, but after that, warmed up quite nicely. We helped Tiana put up her Christmas lights on her house, and we spent a lot of time discussing a couple's trip to Sandals that won't happen until 2008, but it was nice to dream. We were able to stay until Monday, which made our drive home a lot less stressful.
Since we've been home, we've mostly been dealing with Jeff's finals coming up, people showing up all the time to look at the house, and trying to get organized for Christmas & birthdays. Emma's in on Saturday. She's having a party at the SAC bowling alley. She's really excited about it. Only one person has confirmed so far, though, so it might be a small party, lol. I invited everyone in her class. That's 17 kids. Yikes. Thus the reason we're not having it at our house this year.
We got our tree up last weekend. We went out & bought a 7.5 ft. fake, prelighted tree. It actually looks very nice. Emma put most of the ornaments on while I was busy trying to straighten out the limbs of the tree, having just come out of the box. Sarah was having a blast trying to eat all the boxes & bags the ornaments came in, and Jeff was being domestic, making his fabulous hot chocolate. All this topped off with Christmas music playing in the background, very Norman Rockwell.