turkeys & shopping

I am so thankful for everything in my life.  I have a beautiful family, a wonderful church, a job that I enjoy, & friends that we adore. I am blessed and have much to be thankful for year round; but it nice to have a day set aside to spend with family & eat loads & loads of pie!

I normally make a ton of stuff & end up bringing it home with me & eating massive amounts of dessert for days on end.  This year, I only made what was requested so that there wouldn't be a ton of extra food after Thanksgiving.
Paisley is such a good helper & she is actually very good at doing small jobs to help out when I'm cooking.  We made mini cheesecakes, green bean casserole, & sweet potato casserole.  They were all super yummy, but I didn't take any pictures of the process or the final product, so you will just have to take my word for it!

We make the sweet potato casserole from scratch & Paisley liked taking the skin off the potatoes.  

We always eat lunch with Aaron's parents on Thanksgiving & then go to my family's house in the afternoon for another round.  We all matched a bit so I wanted to take the picture for our Christmas cards & Paisley insisted that Taylen be in the picture with us.  She wasn't in a very great mood to begin with, but as soon as we started taking pictures she really clammed up & started making a fuss. Taylen & Paisley posed for a few & she was all smiles!

I think Taylen crouched down to be closer to Paisley, so she thought she should do the same.

The pictures went downhill from here, but we still managed to get some good shots of everyone else.

Aaron kept telling everyone to throw the leaves in the air & Paisley did not like the idea.  Look at that face! 

I downloaded the preview version of Photoshop & worked for 3 days to take Taylen out of our "family" picture & finally managed to make it look presentable enough for our card.  Photoshop is so foreign to me, the instructions may as well be in Hebrew.  I am really forcing myself to work through it though & trying to edit at least 2-3 pictures each day to work on my skills.  It's a work in progress, people!

I'm not 100% happy with the results, but I was ok with it enough to use it for our cards.  

*I am aware I photoshopped p's arm out, I'm not familiar enough with the software to make another one for her, any tips would be welcomed.  :)

Terra & I have a tradition of always going Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving night.  This year with Black Friday starting so early on Thanksgiving, we almost didn't even go.  I wish that retailers would leave it late on Thanksgiving {midnight!} so that the shopping actually is ON Black Friday! 

We did end up going & still had fun, but we were finished shopping by the time we are normally going out, so it wasn't near as exciting as previous years.

We were lazy shoppers this year... we waited in the car at Target until they opened the doors, insead of standing out in the cold in line.  There didn't seem to be as many people out shopping this year, so maybe that will persuade retailers to change it back! Here's hoping.... We did score some great deals & had fun so it was still good.

Hope your thanksgiving was blessed!