A Happy Thanksgiving Weekend

So, usually we travel either to my parents (Illinois) or Andre's family (Pennsylvania) for Thanksgiving, but this year, because we're going to my family for Christmas, and Andre was just with his last week, we decided to stay home and just be us. And despite missing everyone very much, we've had fun.

On Wednesday, we started off the holiday weekend with a date to Fritti (thanks for the gift card Young Adults Committee!). It's a really fun restaurant downtown with great atmosphere and even better pizza (try the Chocolate Soup for dessert if you go). We finished the evening with a stroll around IKEA, looking at dressers which we need as extra storage/changing table for the baby room/guest room. We're keeping our guest room in tact and Baby Y will have one corner of it, so we're trying to come up with creative storage solutions.

Yesterday, we started the THE GREAT DE-CLUTTER of the guest room, cleaning out the closet, bookshelves and storage bins under the bed. Needless to say this is an emotionally draining task for someone as sentimental as myself! Even Andre admits, however, that I have improved dramatically over the last few years and have consolidated things quite nicely into plastic storage bins. BUT...there are several storage bins. To give you an idea, I have one whole bin (and it's a big one) full of birthday cards, letters and notes, some from high school! I am avoiding going through it. But the time has come, because there is now no more room to stash that bin!

On to more inspiring news...we have chosen fabric for Baby Y's cradle:



And today we picked out paint. After several hours sorting bookshelves this morning, we braved the traffic of Black Friday, which really wasn't too awful, and picked up two paint samples at Home Depot. We're repainting the guest room a very pale blue, which should go nicely with our existing bedroom set of white, black and red. I'll post before and afters when it's all finished.

This evening Andre's been watching a James Bond marathon, and I made chocolate chip cookies for our guard at the front gate, Kevin. I did make him some last week, but when I went to drop them off on my way to work, he wasn't on duty. And I was never able to deliver them actually, as I munched through the entire bag during the course of the day! Oops. I worked off my guilt (if not the extra calories) by making him another batch tonight :) Before I could munch my way through those, Andre made sure to run them down to him as soon as they were out of the oven!

So lots of little details and small tasks have made up our Thanksgiving weekend so far. Oh, and last night we went over to have dinner with our friends, Robin and Jay and had a delightful time meeting some of their family too, and eating an INCREDIBLE turkey feast. Yummy!

We are so thankful for this special time in our lives, anticipating and preparing for our little boy's arrival, enjoying the holidays and rejoicing in all God has given us.