Turkeyday Weekend Recap

Hello blog world! I intended to get back a little sooner, but when I am gone for the weekend, especially as long a weekend as this one was, there is so much to do that it's hard to find time to blog. And since we don't live near our families, when we do go to visit them, I like to be there and not on the computer. Also, I apologize, because I still cannot find my camera, this post will lack fun pictures. So I'll try to keep it brief.

We headed up to northern kentucky after work on wednesday evening. We spent time with Derek's parents wednesday night. Thursday morning was spent getting ready for our thanksgiving feast. Derek's aunt and uncle, as well as his brother's family joined us for thanksgiving day. The food was so delicious, and spending time with family was wonderful. My nephews are growing up. Henry is almost 3 and is hilarious. I got to spend some quality time playing with him, as well as holding my little 6 month old nephew, Oliver. They are both too cute. We ate lunch in the early afternoon, watched football all day, ate leftovers again for dinner and hung out some more all evening. Rob, Corrie and the boys spent the night at Derek's parents house even though they live close by. It was fun to have a sleepover. We hung out pretty much all day Friday too. I didn't change out of my pajamas til 5:00. It was glorious.

Unfortunately, Derek's younger brother and his wife couldn't join us, because they live in Pennsylvania and she is due with her first baby tomorrow! We're keeping them in our prayers though. I can't wait to meet the newest nephew!

Also, we didn't end up doing any shopping this weekend. We thought about it, but we didn't have anything in particular that we needed to buy and weren't (and still aren't) sure what we are going to buy everyone. So we decided to hang out around the house with the family all day. The rest of the weekend was spent in similar fashion. We went to see Harry Potter on Saturday (loved it!) and got to see some friends as well, and by Saturday night we were back in Lexington.

On Sunday we finished putting up the last of our Christmas decorations and had a Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of our friends. Another pot-luck style dinner where everyone brings a dish and we all feast. It was delish! My friends make great food. I'm so thankful for them.

All in all it was a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. Coming back to work has been tough, but luckily, I have this Friday off, so I'm almost halfway through the work week.

I'm gonna try to jump back into the 12 days of Christmas blogging challenge here soon! And I have appropriately Christmafied my blog. I'm 100% in the Christmas spirit!

The Greatest Gift

Today for Aly and Molly's 12 Days of Christmas the topic is the best / most meaningful gift you have ever received.




Today I am going to go all serious on you, because this one is easy for me - it would have to be the gift of grace. I know it probably sounds cliche but as we approach Thanksgiving and I think about what I am thankful for, there are so many things. But without grace the rest of it means nothing.

If Jesus had not taken on the form of a man and come to earth to save us sinners, I would still have lots of things, lots of really good things, but the truth is, it would all be meaningless, and what is worse, I would try to use all those other gifts to find satisfaction in my life. And I have found that trying to find meaning, happiness and fullness in life is not possible without Jesus. But oh man, do I try. To be dependent on a God that I cannot see or physically touch is one of the hardest things. It would be so much easier if my husband, or my family, or my financial security, or relationships, or stuff could do it. Because those things I can control (at least to some degree). I can see them and I can logically work out what I need to do to make them work. But God is not like that. And so I don't want to be dependent on something I can't control or can't always be sure that if I put A and B together I will get C.

And because of this, I try to find life in so many other places. I've tried making other good things the ultimate thing in my life. And in doing so I have turned my back on the very God who created me. Which is why the gift of grace, the gift of Christ, is the best gift I have ever received. It is not something I even remotely deserve, or anything I could ever pay back even a fraction of. To have someone die so that you don't have to is something that I don't think I will ever comprehend the enormity of. But receving this gift has changed everything. It has given me meaning, purpose, a fullness in life that nothing else could bring. It has changed my relationships, the way I spend my time and money, the way I view myself, the way I view others. It frees up the good things in my life to simply be good things, not things I depend on for my happiness or identity. Every other good thing is only good because of this gift. And so that I what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving, and that is why the gift of grace is easily, hands down, the greatest gift I've ever received.

Black Friday!

Today on Aly and Molly's 12 Days of Christmas Blog Challenge the topic is Black Friday / General Shopping Tips and Tricks.




I need to preface this by saying that I am not a serious Black Friday shopper. I can't get myself up earlier than probably 5 am, nor do I want to. But my goal is to shoot for the early morning, after the serious shoppers who get there when the store opens are gone, and before everyone else wakes up. Now this does mean that you miss out on some of the best deals, but you can still get some good buys this way. Also, just because you get there when the store opens doens't mean that you will be guaranteed what you set out for.

Last year we had been saving up for a new tv. The tv we got when we first got married broke (can you believe that? It was only a couple years old!) We saved up our dollars for the Black Friday sales and came home with a pretty good deal. The first thing we did was check out all of the ads for every store that sold tvs. We made a list of the brand, specs and prices of all the tvs that were in our price range and size/quality range. The key here was to be flexible and not have our hearts set on one specific tv. We found that we could get generally the same tv at several different stores for around the same price.

Next we came up with a game plan. We looked at which stores were close to one another and plotted our course so we could go from one store to the next until we found one that had a tv left in our price range. We had about 5 or 6 different stores that we could go to.

We also enlisted help. Derek, my mom, my aunt and myself went. This way we could split up and quickly see if the store had what we wanted, and one person could go find a sales associate to help, etc.

We ended up getting our TV at Best Buy which was the second store we went to. The TV we ended up with wasn't even one that we had seen advertised, which is probably why they still had some left by the time we got there. It was a little more than we planned on spending, but it was a better quality TV. We still have yet to see a TV that is the size and quality of ours for the price we got it at.  So the key points here are to go with an idea of what you want in mind, but be flexible.

After buying the TV we headed to some other stores to do some general shopping. My advice for that is to have one person stand in line while the others shop. You can rotate out so everyone gets a chance to shop, but the lines are so long that if you wait to get in line you will waste a lot of time.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try and brave the crowds this year or just sleep in. I'll let you know what I ended up doing and if I end up getting any deals!

Christmas Traditions

After I posted my Miscellany Monday post this morning, I saw that today is Day 1 of the 12 Days of Christmas Blog Challenge over at Aly's blog, Analyize This, and the topic for today is Christmas/Holiday traditions. Since I am married and don't have any kids, we haven't really established any of our own traditions, but we have 2 families that we would like to see around Christmas time, so every year looks different. I got excited though, thinking about the Christmas traditions I grew up with and wanted to join in the fun and write about those.





My favorite Christmas memories growing up involve Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. My family would go to Christmas Eve church service, and out to eat every year. Sometimes we would go to our own church, sometimes my aunt's church if she was singing or playing guitar. And we would always go out to eat. Sometimes before church, sometimes after depending on which church service we decided to go to. And sometimes it was just my mom, dad, grandma, sister and myself, and other years it was the whole family. This part was flexible. But when we got home, my sister and I would ALWAYS open our gifts to each other on Christmas Eve. Then we would put on our favorite pajamas and we would all pile into my parents bed and read these 3 books: 

All of us reading these books before bed might be the thing I miss most from our childhood Christmas traditions. We read these books every year up to the Christmas before I got married when I was 22.

On Christmas morning we would all go downstairs together and open gifts. As we got older we slept in longer, but when we were little my parents would have to tell Julie and I that we weren't allowed to wake them up until 7:00 or some really early hour. But we would wake up before that so excited and would hang out in each other's rooms until that time, so excited to open our Christmas gifts. Then after we opened gifts my mom would make Santa pancakes and we would play with our new toys all day until it was time to either go to my grandma's house or have everyone over to our house to celebrate with our extended family.
 Such good times!

Now it's your turn to head over to Aly's and join in and share your favorite traditions!

Miscellany Monday

It's Monday! It's a 3-day work week! Happy day! Here's what's going on round here:

1. I spent the weekend in Indiana at weekend camp with some LCA peeps and other YL friends. We had a super fun weekend of hanging out and fellowship. I didn't get nearly enough sleep but we had a great time.

2. Also on a young life note, tonight we are having our annual Thanksgiving potluck dinner. We started this tradition last year and it was one of my favorite things we do. One of the girls' mom makes us a turkey and everyone brings their favorite side dish or desert and we have a big ol' Thanksgiving dinner together. We love it, the students love it, and it makes us all feel like family. I can't wait. I'm making sweet potato casserole again. Here are some pics from last year's dinner. We're having it at the same place this year!

3. Naps. I have such a love-hate relationship with them. They feel so wonderful when you are taking them, but afterward I feel groggy and out of it for the rest of the day. I can't decide if it's worth it to nap or if I should just wait and get all my sleep at night.

4. Harry Potter! We are going to go see the new Harry Potter movie over Thanksgiving when we go up to Norther Kentucky for Thanksgiving. I LOVE Harry Potter. The books are so good. If you haven't read them I seriously recommend you do. The movies are good, but the books are so much better.

5. Speaking of the book being better than the movie, Have you read Confessions of a Shopaholic? Those books are seriously hilarious. I remember when I first read them thinking they should make a movie out of them, but they changed so many things and it's just not nearly as good as book.

I think that's all for today. I hope everyone enjoys Thanksgiving week! Hopefully you get a day or 2 off work or get to enjoy spending time with someone who does!

Call Us Crazy...

But Tuesday night, Derek and I put up our Christmas decorations! Now I usually have issues with starting Christmas before Thanksgiving, but for some reason this year I'm just going with it. Maybe it was because while we were shopping in Chicago all of the stores were decorated for Christmas and it got is in the spirit early. Maybe it was because we realized that since we'll be out of town for the next two weekends we might as well take advantage of an unexpected free night. Or maybe because we head out of town before Christmas and want to enjoy our decorations as much as possible. But whatever the reason, we just decided that people can judge us and give us a hard time all they want, but our house is ready for Christmas!

Derek even let me watch White Christmas whlie we put the tree up. Ever since I can remember my family has always watched White Christmas while we decorate the tree, and since I probably won't be able to go up to Columbus to help my parents put their tree  up :( I was so glad I got to watch it!

So here are some of the interesting dynamics of Christmas decorating at the Warnick household:

1. It is my job to fluff the tree. {Yes, we have a fake tree, but it was free and it's so hard to go out and spend money on a real one every year when someone offers you a free fake one. And with a fake tree, you can put it up as early as you want :)} So you know how when your tree has been in storage all year long and you take it out it is not very full and you have to spread out all of the branches? Well I think that properly fluffing the tree is key to having a good looking Christmas tree. However, it is time consuming and not the most fun job. Derek doesn't have the patience for this so its my job.

2. Putting lights on the tree is a team effort and pretty easy to do. We use colored lights because we have all sorts of different colored ornaments. I would one day love to have a fancy tree with white lights and a color theme going on, but Derek loves variety, which brings me to the next point...

3. I love pretty glass ball ornaments in red, green, silver and gold. Derek loves unique ornaments. The ones you get every year with the date on them, or that have meaning. So I put up all of our pretty ornaments and Derek puts up all the fun ones. It's the only way I can get him to help me decorate the tree.

4. My favorite part of Christmas decorations is putting up the tree and watching White Christmas. After that I could be done. Don't get me wrong, I love a house that is beautifully decorated for Christmas all over. But I could be happy if all we had up was a Christmas Tree and a manger scene. Derek does a great job of decorating the rest of the house for Christmas. Putting Christmas towels in the bathroom. Setting up the little Christmas village I got from my grandma. Finding a home for all the little Christmas-y things we have accumulated over the years. {Although I think I would like to get some new decorations for the mantle and make that look real pretty - I just don't want to spend any money on it!}

So that's pretty much how Christmas decorating goes at our house. Since I no longer have a camera there are no pictures to document this years Christmas decorations, but you can check out all the pictures from last year right here. I haven't gotten anything new, so not much has changed. And we still have the cheap tacky plastic gold star on top of the tree. Does anyone have any suggestions for a good Christmas tree topper?

Chi-Town!

This past weekend Derek and I headed up to Chicago to visit some of our best friends. We stayed with Kari and her husband Stephen and my friend Sarah stayed with us too.  Now I seem to be having some bad luck with cameras. I broke our camera on our trip to Marco Island, but luckily Sarah had an extra that she let me have. Well, now it seems I have misplaced that one as well. So I have no photos to document our trip. But Kari let us take some using her camera, so as soon as I get my hands on those I will share :) So here is the text only version of our little trip.

We headed out on Friday morning - after oversleeping because our power went out on Thursday and when I reset my clock Thursday evening I set it to AM. So my alarm was set to the correct time on Friday morning, except my clock thought it was night time therefore it didn't go off :(  (Losing power also caused me to get stuck at my house because my car was in the garage and I couldn't figure out how to get the door open so my boss had to come rescue me - but that's another story for another day.) Our goal was to get to Chicago before crazy rush hour traffic and we got started an hour and a half late. But we made good time and got into town before traffic started getting too crazy.

Kari and Stephen live in Lincoln Park so the first thing we did was take a little walk around town. They have a cute little pond right by their apartment, we went down to the beach and walked along it for a while and then headed back to the apartment by way of the zoo. Unfortunately most of the exhibits were closed by the time we got to the zoo so we didn't get to see lots of animals, but the sun was setting and the views were beautiful. That night we headed downtown to meet Stephen at Giordano's Pizza for dinner. Wow. That pizza is amazing! We spent the rest of the evening hanging out and talking and Kari teaching me how to sew a fun little project for my newest nephew who should be arriving in the next couple of weeks!

Saturday morning we woke up from a wonderful nights sleep. Their guest bed is super comfy! Kari made us a delicious breakfast and I finished my sewing project. We all headed down to Michigan Avenue to get some shopping in. We started at one end and worked our way down and then headed over to State Street to get some Garrett's Popcorn. Ok, this stuff is like crack. It is so good. I wish we had more. I'm salivating just thinking about it. If you ever go to Chicago you must get some. By the time we got our popcorn it was getting pretty cold, so we headed to a little tea shop and got some drinks and ate our popcorn. A few of Kari's friends met up with us and we hung out for a bit.

Next was more shopping. We tried on lots of clothes and even bought a few things. We went to what used to be Marshall Fields (and is now Macy's) and went to Holiday Lane where we purchased our 2010 Ornament. Every year Derek and I try to buy an ornament from one of our trips to put on our Christmas tree. We got  pizza slice ornament and Kari wrote Chicago 2010 on it for us. Then we headed to Joy Yee in Chinatown for dinner. And it was amazing too! We ate so much good food. It is a good thing we did a lot of walking while we were there. That is another cool thing about Chicago. We drove there, but once we parked our car we didn't have to use it until we left. We took busses and trains everywhere and walked and I loved it. (I probably wouldn't have loved it so much if it was 10 or 20 degrees colder.)  After dinner we took the train back to the apartment and hung out some more. It was so great to get to hang out with such good friends who I used to see on the regular and no longer get to.

Sunday morning involved cinnamon rolls and chruch at Moody Church. (Sarah had to head back to Naperville before church so this is where we parted ways with her.) It was so cool to go to church there. For one, it's just a really great church  with a great message, and two, I loved how multi-cultural it is. In Lexington, at least at the churches I've been to, it's 95% + white folks. Here there were people from all over the world. I think it was cool to see what it's really going to look like in heaven one day. We loved it. After church we went to pocket puppies and played with cute little puppies and then to lunch. Sadly, after lunch it was time to go. We had such a great trip though and I can't wait to go back. I loved Chicago (although I'm thinking I'm going to wait til spring to head back) and I loved seeing my friends. I miss them so much, but it was so fun hanging out.