Best Christmas Present Yet!

This year we are traveling to New York for Christmas. Because it is pointless to drag all of our presents to New York and then back to Lexington, we decided to open our presents before we left. Greg had the the most presents to open (though none of them were cool like a PS3 or an HD large screen TV). Amber surprised me again this year with some of the best presents...3 awesome Tour de France water bottles for my bikes and a cool pull over for biking to and from school in the morning.

But the highlight of this year was my gift to Amber. You see, Amber is quite humble and every time I ask her what she wants for Christmas she always responds with, "Just to spend time with you."...Oh Please!!!! So to make a long story short, my previous four years of Christmas presents for Amber were horrible. But this year different.

Without further ado, I present Amber's Christmas card cover:

And a video of her opening the present:

Nice Kicks!

Noel's cousin Scotty and his wife Jessie gave Greg the cutest Converse shoes last year around Christmas time. They are size 5, so at the time, they were too big. A few months ago I figured they would probably fit. So cute! Too bad they won't fit for too much longer; it's getting hard to fit his chubby feet in there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year for Thanksgiving, Noel's parents and grandparents came to visit. It is always a treat to have them around. They got in Wednesday night and the cooking frenzy began Thursday morning. No pictures of Thanksgiving dinner. Oops. We had a magnificent feast. True to form, Gordie made (I think) 7 or 8 pies. They were delish, and we are still enjoying them. We also had some great rolls, mashed potatoes, broccoli, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and of course turkey. It was fantastic! Noel's cousin Kristi, her husband Justin, and their son Landon came up from Bowling Green. We also had the Jones family, Jackson family, and our friend Pat from our ward. It was so fun!!!

Noel ran a turkey trot Thursday morning out at Keeneland (a few other people from the ward were in it too). Probably one of the funniest things from the race was the lady completing the course in a tiny buggy being pulled by a little pony. I don't know why I never get my camera out. I think that it stems from the fact that Noel is so good at taking pictures that I usually rely on him to do it. So because he was running the race, no pictures.

Of course, Greg was totally spoiled by all the attention that he received with 4 extra people in the house. He had such a fun time with his grandparents and great-grandparents. Now it's just boring ol' mom around the house all day. I'm sure he is wondering where the fun people went!

On Friday, we played volleyball at the church with some friends in the ward. We had a really fun time. I was especially excited because growing up, my family would get together to play volleyball the day after Thanksgiving. So even though I wasn't with them for the holiday, I still got to do one of the traditions.

Here are some cute pictures that Noel took while we were at the park on Saturday. It was such a beautiful day.