Black Friday

Some people go to Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or Target on Black Friday...

for the second year in a row, we hit Ikea!!!

No doorbusters there, just a gi-normous place full of inexpensive Swedish furniture and household "stuff."

(stuff = everything you can imagine)

Even Jacob likes it... it's tickles his little organizing soul.

We wandered around until we thought our legs would fall off and could no longer bear Christian's moans & groans, then capped off our visit with lunch in the cafe.

(Ikea has yummy Swedish meatballs!)

It was just like last year, and perhaps next year too!

That afternoon, we headed to Benji & Rebekah's. Benji and Rebekah are friends that Jacob grew up with here in Jackson, and I met them when we were all at MTSU. They're now living in Dallas while Benji attends seminary. It's so fun to be able to see them during Thanksgiving... seeing family AND friends makes the long drive even more worth it.

We brought the game Elefun to Benji & Rebekah's daughter, Caroline.

Elefun is a hilarious game. The elephant blows butterflies out of his trunk, and the children use nets to catch them. I highly recommend it if you need a gift idea for a 2-3 year old!


Friday night, we went to a Christmas kickoff in Highland Park Village. Jacob carried Isaac in his front pack, and they made quite the colorful Christmas combo.

(We have been known to dress colorfully or dress alike to be silly, but this time, it was unintentional!)

a toys soldier on stilts!

(that's a tell-tale sign of a good upcoming Christmas season, right?)



It'll be a while before he can eat this, but he sure had a grip on it.


We had a great time that night...

Highland Park Village really kicks off the Christmas season well with free cookies & hot chocolate, a marionette show, the lighting of a giant Christmas tree and all the lights in the village shops, and even free carriage rides. The carriage ride line was really long, so we headed off to have a great dinner at a little Italian place afterwards. Jacob got the biggest calzone I've ever seen for $4.95 and is still talking about it.