Mandisa and Matthew West

Mandisa and Matthew West are coming to Brookwood tomorrow for a Christmas concert and I cannot wait to go. The Brookwood Praise Choir will be singing with them!!! Yay so excited!

SPOILED

So after the wedding Mike and I both decided that we would not be exchanging Christmas presents with each other due to the fact that we just paid for the wedding. Anyway today we went to the outlet mall and I got S-P-O-I-L-E-D, seriously spoiled!!! How generous of my husband!!! I can't wait to tell ya'll what he got me! But you will have to wait 12 more days just like me!!! Thank you baby!!!!

A NY kind of Christmas

Mike and I are going to NY for Christmas this year!!! This makes me very happy. I just don't like the idea of having Christmas without my mom. I did it once and it wasn't the same at all. I don't like that Aprille and Trent won't be with us again :( but it didn't make any sense for us to stay in SC when both of our families for the most part are in NY. Christmas is a lot different for me this year. Maybe it is because I don't have a job so I am spending my money very carefully. I certainly am not spending what I normally do. Mike and I kind of agreed to not buy anything major for each other because we just paid for our wedding 3 months ago. I have been giving to organizations close to my heart though. For some reason I feel the burning desire to donate more this year, I think because I know there are so many people that would love to just open one gift, and there will be many that won't even do that because they just can't afford to. Here are some pictures of Christmas last year. Memories that will last a lifetime! Merry Christmas!!

Anyone know how to get the pictures to post at the end???? AARgh!!!!

Mast General Store

I love this place. It is Mast General Store. There are a few locations in the Carolina's but the one closest to us is in Downtown Greenville. I went there tonight to do some Christmas Shopping. The floors are creaky hardwood. They have bulk candy for sale set up in huge old wooden barrels. They have so many toys from my childhood!! For example, raggedy ann dolls, the metal/tin jack in the box, the "old fashioned" little golden books with the original illustrations, and many other things! It reminds me of my childhood seeing so many of those old new things! The older I get the more nostalgic I get! It also makes me want to have kids so I can pass on to them the traditions that I loved so much as a child! Now do we adopt or have our own!? ;)

Thanksgiving 2008

Mike and I celebrated Thanksgiving in FL this year with his dad Dave, and stepsister Joanna. We had turkey, stuffing, potatoes, sweet potato casserole, peas, green bean casserole, rolls and pumpkin pie. This is a picture of us working on the meal!


We started the week with a trip to both Universal Studios Parks. The Hulk is the rollercoaster that I rode a few years ago with Mike but refused to go again since he had 2 other willing participants. They rode it twice.

Before we ate our Thanksgiving meal we were sitting out on the patio playing Sequence and we happened to look up and see this being written in the sky by a tiny tiny little airplane, I mean like so tiny you couldn't even see it

Well I put the pictures in correct order but for some reason the blog put them in backwards. Anyway it was pretty cool to see this in the sky!

Mike, Dave and Joanna got to golf 3 times. It was a pretty resort and we had nice nice weather!!

Hope your Thanksgiving was a blessing.

More Sun Damage

Well as most of you know I had a mole removed almost 3 weeks ago already. It was on my chest up near my collarbone. It has been there for at least 5 years. A few weeks before the wedding I noticed it had started to change shape, so I waited till after the wedding to have the biopsy, anyway it came back as abnormal. It was not melanoma, but apparently the type of mole that it was has the tendency to become melanoma so I had it removed. Well I thought that the surgery was pretty minor, which it really was, but on Monday when I had the stitches out, I learned that the incision was much larger than I had thought!!! It looks to be healing well though, just some bruising. I have a large bump under the site, and I need to massage it for the next several weeks, 8-12 to be exact, to try to prevent raised scarring. I am also wearing something called silicone scar sheets. These are supposed to also help with the scar. I wear each sheet for 3-4 days then take off and repeat for the next 8 to 12 weeks. I have just come to grips that I will be wearing a LARGE bandaid on my chest for the next 3 months!!! Another reason to stay out of the sun without sunscreen!!!!! My next skin check is Dec 1.

Apple Pie

I love to bake. Apple Pie is definitely one of my favorite things to bake. I have tried many different recipes but recently tried one with tapioca and 6 cups of apples, yup that's right I said 6 cups of apples. There were 3 different kinds in the pie and it turned out great!!! It tasted soooo good and stayed as "high" after baking as it was pre-baking! Take a look.....