Following the Kirks

The Saturday after Thanksgiving started the decorating process in our house. First stop: The Christmas tree farm. Brandon insists we have a real tree every year.  He does have a good point with the awesome smell it leaves behind, but the mess is just disastrous for the next six months. We got ourselves a beautiful 7 foot tree......that turned out being a bit tall for our ceilings :/!  Once we got the tree in the house is when we realized we got it a little too big.  It scraped the ceiling as we put it up.  After a million fights with my cousin about what colors he wanted to use on my tree, we had an agreement and it turned out great. Nathan's specialty is the topper and he did a great job! On to the next two trees..... This is our small one in the front room that we set on top of a barrel. From the outside it looks like a 6 foot tree.  Our stair banister is all decked out too..... Every year for the past 4 years we have had a wine themed tree, but since we bough...

As soon as Thanksgiving dinner ended, we immediately switched gears to Christmas.  My sister, my cousin and I left at 8:00 at night to get some Black Friday deals!  We left the chitlens with their dads and went on our way.  Toys R Us was brutal but we made it out in one piece. Target looked rough when we first walked in but ended up being very fast with an easy checkout.  Nathan gave up at the Target point and went to the truck to go to sleep......really?!  Kohls was so bad we walked in and walked right back out! Nothing there was worth a 4 hour wait!  The day after Thanksgiving always calls for champagne, Eggs Benedict, waffles, and golfing for the guys. This year we added Christmas decorating to the list.  We had our little elf out from Illinois do we needed to use him to our best ability.  My parent's house was all done by the end of Friday! Wowzers!  They have such a beautiful house that no matter what it will look amazing, but Nathan did...

So much meaning to that title!  This year was our 11th annual Misfit Thanksgiving Buffet.  We welcome anyone over who wants to come. Most people that come over don't have family nearby like us so we all just get together for a huge thanksgiving feast. Everyone has to bring their favorite childhood dish from Thanksgiving. It calls for great times, great food, and great libations including Jell-O shots! (Minus those libations and Jell-O shots for me this year, although I did drink my Sprite out of a wine glass). Dynasty? Well back in August my brother in law, Matt, called my dad and Brandon to challenge them to a longest beard contest until Thanksgiving. The person that lost had to buy the pig that we roast every year. The biggest loser was Brandon. The biggest winner was my dad!  We also get to have a lot of our family together for some family pictures!  We also had my cousin out from Illinois! It was great to have a little bit of Illinois with us. We hope you all had...