The Harper Family: November 2011

Our tradition for Thanksgiving is to go to Roanoke, VA every year. We love spending time with the Harper family! This year it was a little different because we left right after my teacher workday on Wednesday and we were coming from Cheraw instead of Durham. It took a little under 4 hours to get from C to R. On Wednesday we came in to Cheri and TG's house and stayed with them like we always do! It is always so great to see everyone since we don't get to see them very often. The ongoing joke when we arrive is that TG calls me Julie because the first year I came he purposefully called me the wrong name the whole time and it stuck! He also introduced himself the first time we met wearing a gray mullet wig... everyone was cracking up and I had no clue that wasn't his normal hair!!!! We had a wonderful dinner that Cheri cooked with BBQ chicken, ranch chicken, potatoes, green beans, rolls...mmm! It was so good! Marshall and Patrick went to the local gym and acted like they just moved to the area and were thinking about joining... haha (since we've joined the gym in Cheraw and been going he felt he needed to go). While they did that I played cards with Cheri, Katie, Kevin, Ben, Megan, Doug, Karen, and Chase. We played a game called Scum that I've never played before that was a lot of fun! Then we watched the Duke basketball game at 10.

On Thursday, we were super lazy because we didn't end up going to bed until about 1:45 the night before and woke up around 9:30. Cheri cooked a big breakfast and Katie and I helped to make sausage poofs (I think that's what they were called). It was sausage and cream cheese stuffed in crescent rolls into little balls and then baked! They were delicious! We also had biscuits, eggs, bacon, sausage gravy...! Like I said, I was not lacking in the food department!! Thursday night we went over to Inez and Bob's house and had Thanksgiving dinner with the whole fam! Another tradition we have is that everyone brings Black Friday AD's and we all sit around after dinner and look at them and make lists of what to get the next day. It was crazy this year because some of the stores were opening at midnight so we left a little earlier to shop that night instead of the next morning. Marshall and I went to Old Navy at midnight and some people had already been there since 10:30 that night in line!! We got in with the 2nd wave of people and I was able to get a lot of the stuff I was going for! After Old Navy we went back to Cheri's and went to bed until about 7:45 then got up and went to Dick's and back to the mall to the rest of the stores! We got some awesome deals!

On Friday afternoon we got back and watched Christmas Vacation and took some naps and then went out to dinner at Cheddar's with everyone. That night we rented Horrible Bosses and watched it and then the Carolina game. It was such a long and relaxing Thanksgiving break! I always look forward to this time of no-stress, no-school, no-responsibility, and retail therapy through Black Friday! On Saturday, Marshall had been looking forward to going to downtown Roanoke to go to the Roanoke Weenie Stand. I've never been and it had been so long since he'd been that he was excited! Downtown was sooo cute! We walked around all the little vendors downtown and then hit the road back to Che--raw and got back around 5:00... what a wonderful trip! :)