thanksgiving

We were so incredibly blessed at Thanksgiving to have Mark's parents and siblings travel allllll the way to our house in Columbia so we could all be together. We were even more excited when we found out Mark got the day off! yippee. I was HORRIBLE at taking pictures because a. I was cooking and that was insane. but somehow, by the grace of God and because I started five days in advance, all the food was cooked in time for the meal and it actually didn't taste too bad either. and b. we were very busy playing Just Dance on the wii. hilarious. and c. we were just having so much fun there wasn't time to take pictures. oh and d. i probably gained 15 lbs. from cooking/eating so much so i didn't really want to be photographed anyway.

here's the delicious turkey my good man and my father in law fried up for us! yum. southern cooking in missouri!

sweet sisters in law! (anne marie made she and grace matching turkey shirts so they could match with reese and silly me didn't get a very good picture of them all together... it was so cute though!)

the feast.... i think everything was made from scratch, used a crazy amount of butter, was either a recipe passed down from my mom or grandma or the pioneer woman, of course. the whole day i kept envisioning myself cooking in a kitchen in some super awesome old, front porched, double oven, big island to serve on, house in tennessee instead of in our funny, tiny kitchen duplex.... but we still had a blast with everyone and who cares where we are as long as we're together (cheesy but true.)

and the makeshift two tables put together... that actually turned out pretty great. I made a table cloth to fit and I also recovered our old card table and chairs so it didn't look so 70s ish. It turned out to be so easy! maybe I'll post how i didn't it one of these days when i find more time...

cute!

reeser was obsessed with the parade! (shocker) she loved the dancing and the balloons :) 

auntie anne made her this adorable christmas outfit too. we've worn it so much!! it even has bells :)

We really didn't want the visit to come to an end because we had so much fun together but we can't wait to see everyone again!! thanks for traveling all the way up here to visit. we love you mason family!!!!!

the next weekend mark, reese and i traveled to dallas for mark to be in one of his best friends' weddings. again, i didn't ever take a single picture except for these on my phone. it was a quick, crazy weekend - as always when we're in dallas- but we had fun with family and friends.