I have to apologize, I’m terrible at keeping this site updated!

Nick and I are both doing well. At the end of December, we passed our 1-year mark for living here in Nashville. It’s hard to believe it’s already been a year.

We spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas here in Nashville, just the two of us. (Well the two of us, plus Gracie & Gidget — our dog & cat.)

Thanksgiving was nice. I cooked my first turkey. That was something I didn’t expect to do this early in my lifetime. I’d always assumed we’d just go to my parents or in-law’s house for holiday dinners and I’d get out of having to cook a turkey at least for a few years. But I wasn’t about to let us have a Thanksgiving without one at all. Lucky for me, I bought a Butterball turkey and they had all the turkey “bits” all in bags so I didn’t have much to do to clean it. (That was the part I was dreading, ha ha.)

But I made a stuffed turkey (successfully!), mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn.  I even made pumpkin and pecan pies!  (I used this recipe for chocolate bourbon pecan pie - I highly recommend it.  Yum!)

Christmas was very quiet. We put up a small Christmas tree but didn’t put any ornaments on it (just lights and tinsel). It was a good thing too, because as I anticipated, our cat knocked it over multiple times.

Nick woke me up at 5 a.m. on Christmas morning to open gifts! I asked him if he’d never heard of the “7 a.m. rule”?! Apparently only my family had that (not being allowed out of bed any earlier than 7 a.m. on Christmas morning). Remind me to convince Nick of the 7 a.m. rule before we have kids…

Anyway, there were lots of lovely presents to open. Nick totally outdid me. He got me an 80 GB iPod Classic. I was so excited!

Later in the day, we opened presents with my whole family via Skype video chat. I got to see my mom, dad, grandpa & Sally, grandma & Dan, and even my old dog, Kodi. It worked out pretty well and was the next best thing to actually being home for Christmas. (Thank goodness for technology.)

Anyway, I guess that’s all the family news for right now. I have a few more video clips from the wedding that I’ll hopefully have time to edit and upload soon. I’ll post them on the video page when they’re ready.