Nonna rocks!

Thanksgiving is normally held at my house.  We have a few other military families over for food, nice company and football.  This year we were invited over to our friend's house.  We had a lot of fun eating and hanging out with everyone.  Of course, it wasn't the same without Dad, but we made due. :)

The day after Thanksgiving, my mom came to visit us from Atlanta.  We always love when she comes to visit.  The kids love playing with her, and she's so helpful that it takes some pressure off of momma too. :)  We did some Christmas shopping while she was here as well as some Christmas decorating.  I always put my tree up right after thanksgiving and I wasn't going to let Braydon being gone interrupt my fun. :) 

We have a pre-lit fake tree that we got on a day after Thanksgiving sale about 5 or 6 years ago now.  It was a fabulous deal and came with white and colored lights on it.  You can switch which ones you want on or light up both.  It has a remote control, so it's so easy.  Last year, I remembered us having some issues with some of the lights working, but Braydon had fixed them.  This year I took the tree out of the box and about 20% of the lights worked on it.  I wasn't going to spend time finding which ones were broken, so Mom and I took them off the tree!  An hour and a half later, we had a light-free tree.  I bought some lights from Hobby Lobby and put new ones on it instead.  It looked so much better and now we will have working lights for next year too. :)

Our finished product. :)

I have to add this in.  I tried to get the kids involved with decorating the Christmas tree this year.  Landon just wanted to steal all the ornaments that had a number or a door on them and hoard them.  Sigh.  Sydney, however, LOVED helping!  She liked to help me hang the ball ornaments.  Problem was, she was so quick! Before I could even help her, this is what I found at the bottom of our tree:

At least she's eager to help, right? ;) hehe

After tackling the Christmas decorating, we wanted to have a little bit of fun with the kids too.  Mom loves the pizza place, Papa Murphy's.  There aren't any in Atlanta, so when she comes here, we try to make a point to go there just for her. :)  They are a take-n-bake place where you buy the pizza at the store, they put it together, and then you take it home and bake it in your own oven.  The pizzas are super good and aren't as greasy as other places.  If you haven't tried them yet, you should.  

They have little mini pizza kits for the kids to make their own pizza.  I remember doing that with my Grandpop when I was a kid, so I thought we would give it a try with Landon.  Things like this are very hit or miss with him.  I kept my fingers crossed that he would give it a chance and he loved it!  He did such a good job. :)

Adding the cheese and pepperonis.

Before the oven...

Pictures while the pizza was baking.  Sorry for the blurry pictures.  I think I need to remind myself how to use my camera again!  :)

This one would've been so cute too! :/

Okay, pizza, hurry UP!

Our finished product!  :)

Landon and Nonna spent some time together and Nonna taught Landon how to play tic-tac-toe and hangman.  He did pretty good with it.  He really liked the tic-tac-toe!

As always, a big thank you to my mom for coming to visit!  Especially this time!  It gave me something to look forward to in that long 6 weeks and broke up the time so it went by quicker.  We love you Nonna!!