Thanksmas in Tennessee

We were able to get home to Tennessee for 10 days from Nov 19 - 29. I was able to arrange my schedule so that I only had to take 2 vacation days while we were gone. We flew into Nashville, and Matt and Renee came to pick us up. We had fun spending the night at their place on Wednesday night, and then Tom and Barbara picked us up on Thursday morning to take us up to Knoxville. Trey had a lot of fun getting reaquainted with everyone.

While we were in Knoxville, we had a little family party to celebrate Trey's first birthday. There are so many people who have been a special part of his first year, and it meant a lot to have so many there that we love. Thank you to everyone who came to celebrate with us. I was so excited that my brother Mark and my nephew Benjamin came on Saturday night and stayed overnight for the party on Sunday. It was their first trip to Knoxville. Unfortunately, his wife and other two kids had to stay back home in North Carolina, but it was fun to see Mark even for a short time. Benjamin kept Trey entertained while we got ready for the party. I made a cupcake bouquet for the party, and then we had some snacks to munch on.

We were able to catch up with some friends while we were there. We have missed our friends and especially our community group since we have moved. On Wednesday before Thanksgiving, David's brothers and their wives came to Knoxville for Thanksgiving - I absolutely love it when we are all together. We all pitched in and helped fix Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday - everything turned out so yummy. I ate more than I needed to, but how can you resist when it's Thanksgiving? I love to see David interact with his brothers - they are all so different yet have different little quirks that resemble one another. I also love to see Trey have fun with our extended family - he loves each one of them, and I know the feelings are mutual. The one thing that is hard about living in Arizona is knowing that we are missing out on more frequent interactions with family.

The big thing Trey learned is to climb the stairs. He learned to do it pretty well, but now he needs to learn how to climb back down. A couple times he attempted to come down head first which I wasn't too thrilled about, so we would turn him around to try to teach him to crawl back down the same way he crawled up.

We won't be in Tennessee or Pennsylvania for Christmas, so we were excited to celebrate Christmas with David's family the day after Thanksgiving. My family hardly ever is together on Christmas, so we take any opportunity to celebrate when we are all together. It was the same with David's family except we opened all the gifts from everyone and then everyone opened our gifts. David's brothers and his parents will celebrate Christmas together closer to the actual day, but we were glad to have a little glimpse of Christmas with them.

We had a fun time but were ready to come back to Arizona to get back into our own routine. We have some new friends who are staying at UIM for a few months - Dale and Shirley. They are a retired couple from Kansas who have come to help around the grounds, so that has been a big blessing to David. All the fruit trees need pruning, so Dale has been tackling that everyday. I loaded Trey up in his wagon, and I went out to help David the other day in the orchard. As much as we are sad to be away from family and friends, it is so exciting to know God has us here for a purpose.