Thanksgiving with family!

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone!

My wonderful family came into town last week, and I took a break from blogging. It was so fun to have a house full of people. My parents and Aunt Anna arrived on Tuesday, Nov. 26 and stayed straight through until Monday, Dec. 2. It was great.

Officially they were our first house-guests, and thank goodness everything went off without a hitch. The hot water ran, the beds were set up, there was food in the refrigerator - we were ready for a holiday. Brad was really lucky and got to take the week off of work and spent it with my family. He took them to see Custer's last stand, which is only about an hour away from where we live. My dad has always wanted to see it, my aunt loves to travel and it sounded like my mom had a nice time too.

We already had our 17-pound turkey, and my parents helped us do the last little bit of Thanksgiving shopping. In addition to turkey we had: mashed potatoes, candied yams, asparagus and stuffing. We were going to make brussel sprouts too, but we ran out of steam and made them the next night. We had a very long discussion about whether to put the turkey in a bag in the oven, or whether to baste it compulsively. Brad took charge and we opted to try our luck without the oven bag, and mannnnn did it work out GREAT! Seriously the best turkey I've had.

Check out this beauty

We used my grandmother's china for the first time, and the champagne flutes we got for our wedding. It was a delicious dinner with family!

After Thanksgiving, it was time to start decorating the house for the holidays. My mom, aunt and I all went out and bought tons of beautiful decorations. We got ornaments, lights for the house, lighted reindeer for the yard and lots of pretty Christmas ribbon. My mom and I tried to make bows for the doors on the house, I made two and then ran out of ribbon. Mom gave up :) haha.

My family left at 4 a.m. on Monday, just in the nick of time. They had beautiful weather the entire time they were here, and now we are smack in the middle of a horrible winter storm. We got 11 inches of snow the day they left, and today I woke up to temperatures of -23. We aren't supposed to get above freezing for another full week. I hear with the windchill it's going to be -29 tonight, and that the high today is -3.

So here are a few photos of the frigid north. I'm dreaming of Florida right now.

I don't know how this photo got the snowflakes on it, but I'm pretty impressed with my iphone right now. I took this photo as it was snowing, from the window of my car. Go iphone!!!!