Sniper Christmas Tree 2010

Well, Thanksgiving has already come and past. We loaded our bewldys with all manner of foodstuffs. SJ rocked our faces off with a stellar turkey and we had a great time with family and friends. With turkey day, comes black Friday. Knowing we had to get a few things for lil’ Snipes, we headed out for some midnight sales. To our surprise the stores weren’t all that bad when we got there. There were some lines here and there, but for the most part it wasn’t as cray cray as we thought it would be. However, as the night went on and it drew closer to midnight, the crowds increased in size and insanity. The doors opened finally, we rushed in, got all we were looking for and were out of there in under an hour! We certainly had our game faces on and got some really good deals. That adventure was totally worthwhile.
The rest of Friday was spent laying around the house catching up on some much needed sleep and trying to fend off the desire to eat all the leftovers in one sitting. I made my way back into the masses and found a few more good deals, but for the most part it was a very low key kinda day. The next day however…

We knew we wanted a real tree, so we headed out to our local tree farm and after a little looking around, Chase picked out the perfect one. Since this was like a straight up field of trees, we got to actually cut the thing down. I would love to have had some sort of electric device for the actual cutting, but it all worked out. In a short while, we had the thing down, bagged, and on the car. Our next stop was the Home Depot for some last minute decoration additions. Since it is impossible to enter a Home Depot and leave w/o spending less than $100, we chose our decorations carefully…even though we eventually went back and loaded up on even more.

So back to the crib we got the tree up and let it air out while we set our sights on the exterior of the house. We knew what all we wanted to do, and from a distance, it didn’t look that bad. Our plan was to hang lights on the windows and around the roof of the house. We were both all kinds of gutsy and ready to just jump on the roof and knock that out, yeah… that didn’t happen. After about an hour or so of trying to figure out if a) it was possible using the ladder I had and b) mustering the nerve to actually climb up on this K2-esque steep ass roof, I got myself up there (thanks to a roll of duct tape, a 100ft rope, and Jess holding the other end for dear life). It was a daunting task to get all the hooks around the edge of the roof and then hoist the lights up w/o breaking them. Due to the steepness of the roof, I couldn’t really get all the way down each side, so I had to shimmy around. After an hour or so I was DONE with being up there. Luckily, once I got up on the roof, we had the smart idea of nailing some temporary steps so that I could get back down. In the end, the house looked great and it was totally worth it.

Back inside, we got clean and fed and then went to town on the Christmas tree. It had time to settle and all the branches and limbs were ripe for the decorate-a-thon that was about to happen. It was pretty straight forward, lights, then ornaments, then more ornaments, then clean-up, then delirium. This year, I decided to to a time lapse of the whole process. In reality it took about two or so hours to get everything done, but you can watch it all happen in about three minutes!

Click here to view the embedded video.

So that was that. In one fell swoop we managed to get the inside and outside all decorated up. Jess’ Thanksgiving break was coming to a close, but we had gotten so much done. I’m sure she had a lot more she would have liked to do, but there’s only so much you can get done in a week. Over the next few weeks I’m sure we’ll be adding more decorations to the house, plus we gotta do some more shopping and wrapping and all manner of things. This time of the year tends to fly by. Before we know it, we’ll be walking down the aisle. As much as I can’t wait for that day to be here, I don’t want to miss any of the days between now and then, either.

The Pics:

Not just 1 or 2, but 3 dancing machines!

Our week of thanksgiving bliss was trucking right along. I had good food and traditions with the Turner’s and lots of rest and cooking in Dwood with the boys, so the only thing left was turkey time with the Birney’s (Sniperjess’ family). For those of you that know us…the Birney house is always an interesting experience. It’s untraditional, and slightly unorthodox…but it’s always a good time with genuine intentions from all. My growing time in Dwood lately lead to what I would call a “catch up” session when we got there. The adult beverages were poured and we chatted about the previous week and just life in general. SniperBen had leftovers, but I was somewhat tired of turkey so I passed (which I would later regret…aLOT). SniperBen got yet another look into the life I grew up in. Our holidays are about celebration and believe me…we celebrate. There was laughing and jump roping and Madonna tunes blaring and dancing. I won’t sugar coat it…things get a lil crazy. It’s a lot for a person to take in if they are not accustomed to the Birney house, but SniperBen held his own. (and later held my own….blegghh). I will admit I may have over done the turkey day festivities, but I was still very thankful to have my guy there to load us up and take us home at the end of the night. (Sorry you had to tomtom your way back to my apartment babe…I owe you one! ..or two.)

Aww, we found our perfect tree!

The next morning (after some much needed Tylenol on my part), we had plans to get our tree! Going to the tree farm and cutting down the perfect tree is tradition I have always had and I could not wait to share with the boys. Believe it or not, this was the first time SniperBen had experienced this tradition! That made it all the more exciting for me. Chase ran around pointing out his favorites, and we scoped the place for the best tree. Of course…we found it! Ben cut down his first tree like a pro and we headed home to watch some football and trim the tree…sounds simple, right?

Um… no. We got to my apartment and fought with the #$*& tree for about an hour (at least). We put it in the stand, everything looks great, let go and…wait for it…lean. Try again! Loosen this part…tighten this part..wait for it..it looks great!…wait…lean! GRRRR! This is a classic scenario where SniperBen’s patience is just what I need to keep me from throwing the damn spruce out the back door and getting another one.

Merry Christmas from the Snipers

A deep breathe, and big ol’ hug, and that smile of his and I was laughing about it with him. He suggested dinner and a new, snazzier tree stand. While we were at it…I decided to switch up my boring ol’ theme and have a multicolored party tree!! And that we did…in addition to jazzing up the outside of the apartment too! I love our Milner tree and I love the decorations. We finally rested that night in a warm, cozy apartment filled with the glow of our hard work from the day. It’s the first Christmas I’ve had in a few years now that hasn’t felt like a chore. It’s an absolutely awesome feeling and I can’t wait to make more Sniper adventures this holiday season! (and believe me…stay tuned b/c they are coming!!)

You know we can’t do anything with out taking a ton of photos. So here’s the rest of the photos that help tell the tale of our very first Thanksgiving week together.

Roosevelt, meet Turner

In true Turner style the morning got started with a big plate of food and a lot of scrambling around. After breakfast Jess and I started in on the turkey, gravy base, and more chopping of vegetables. You’d think that after like three days of preparing food, we’d have all this mess done. That wasn’t really the case. There always seemed to be more carrots, onions, celery, taters… oh wait. No potatoes to cut up those had already been taken care of and were in the fridge setting up. Oh, the taters! Let me describe the ways I love thee. Ok, I’m done.

Here’s a side note on the Potatoes Gratin. In planning for this meal, we decided that it would be nice to branch out and try and new dish. Something that would take this whole feast up at least one notch. Well, I found a recipe for some potatoes gratin. So we got everything ready, including roasting our own garlic, making this cheesy cream stuff and boy did it smell good. It was assembled with great care and loaded up in the car in such a way that if a little were to spill out it wouldn’t be that bad (we sat it in a cookie sheet then placed it in the back seat floor board). Well that would’ve been great had the whole pan not erupted all over the place. About three miles form apartment, we both noticed an abundance of garlic smell. Upon further investigation it was discovered that the most epic potatoes on the planet were all over my car. So I pulled over and in a feat of great restraint decided to not throw the entire pan into on coming traffic. Instead I put them in a box I had in the back seat. This proved to be even less successful than I imagined in my head. Once we got to my parents house I discovered that I now had garlic cheesy cream sauce in the back of my car AND in the floor board of the back seat. No worries, we’d simply clean up the mess and put them in the fridge and they would be PERFECT for our lunch the next day.

Roosevelt!

Back to Thanksgiving day! We got everything cooked and boxed up and the house was smelling unbelievable and damn…we forgot to cook the potatoes! Deep breath… Ok, box’em up and we’ll cook them while we eat and have them at dinner. So we get to my aunt’s house (a short walk from my parents) and after chatting for a bit, and getting stuff set up, we start in on what turned out to be one of the best Thanksgiving lunches I’ve ever had. Eventually I smelled something that didn’t smell that fantastic…oh, that must be the potatoes that are now charcoal in the oven. Yeah…after all that we burned the taters. Fail. Oh well, everything else was perfect. From the apple cake that people couldn’t get enough of to the deviled eggs that went faster than you could spell deviled eggs. Everything was just perfect.

Decorating the fence

For years, the Turner tradition has been to decorate my grandmother’s fence after we eat lunch. This year was no exception. The temperature was a bit cold, but we’ve been through much worst. It actually turned out to be pretty amazing out. The kids got to run around and play, the “adults” decorated the fence and we got it all up in no time. I was really glad Jess got experience it this year. She and Chase seemed to just fit right in. Watching her interact with the family and seeing Chase run around and laugh and play just brought a warmth to my heart that I’ve not had before. The day was perfect.

After the fence was done we hung out and chatted for a bit before heading back to the apartment. The plan was to get home, unpack everything, rest up for a bit and then go see a movie. We left it up to Chase since we figured he wouldn’t want to see 2012. Eventually he decided on Planet 51, which turned out to be pretty funny. We had a good time out and about and it was a great end to an outstanding day.

This Thanksgiving day will not be one soon forgotten. Everything fell into place. All the things that were most important to me where with me and I couldn’t have asked for things to go any better. I know it’s been over a week since Thanksgiving and we’re now a few weeks from Christmas, but it’s all good. Sometimes a sniper doesn’t always take the first shot and waits for the right time.

Up next… the Birney Thanksgiving festivities, our first tree, and the end to a nearly perfect week.

Maybe YOU should relax

It all started with a trip to Burger King for some New Moon paraphernalia. I got Jess’ place and we got ready and headed off for some sushi, time with friends, and a gaggle of tweens and/or begrudgingly happy boyfriends and husbands. The movie was ish at best. It was better than Twilight, but then again, Twilight was a pretty terrible movie. There were some decent fight scenes, a fast car or two, some sparkly “vampires”, enough emo looks to make a rainbow cry, and and then some credits. That pretty much sums up the movie, or at least what I recall of it. The night wasn’t a total wash however. On the way to Milner, Jess got word that one of her friends was looking to unload some UGA tix. We jumped at the chance, I stopped by the ATM, got some cash and in exchange, we got tickets to what would be our very first GA game!

UGA vs. KU tickets

Saturday was spent kinda laying around since we were up late on Friday. With this being our first game, we decided that we needed some GA gear so we’d fit in with all the other Athenites. In addition to the new shirts, we went ahead and picked up a new camera. No sense in lugging around the big camera the whole night. The ride out there was pretty quick and after finding a good parking spot, we made our way to Sanford Stadium. The game went as expected, with GA bending over for Kansas and the echo of “Cox’s pass is incomplete” on loop throughout the night. After witnessing a girl getting vomited by a drunk guy hanging over the ledge of the upper level and our asses being frozen off, we decided it was time to head out. The game didn’t get any better after we left, but that’s all good. Jess’ put on a show with some cartwheels on the way to the car.

Sunday was more of the laziness factor of vacation setting in, only this time we went ahead and got all the stuff we would need for the week (dinners, breakfasts, lunches, Thanksgiving, lots of snacking, drinking, etc). Jess had to go pick up Chase that afternoon, so while she was gone, I made up a batch of my soon to be world famous OTP chili. It’s the kind of chili that people ITP can only dream about. The rest of the night was spent enjoying dinner, couch time, iCarly, Sponge Bob, iCarly, Sponge Bob, Suite Life of Zack and Cody, iCarly, and then some non-Nik TV. The first weekend on what was already becoming an epic Thanksgiving break had come to a close.

Chicken Florentine Lasagna

Monday was spent making lists, laying around, playing video games, watching cartoons, napping, cleaning, just being together. For dinner the plan was to make some awesome lasagna. Dinner did not disappoint. Jess whipped up a stellar Chicken Florentine Lasagna that pretty much blew all our minds. Well, it would’ve blown our mind some more had it not been for the inedible “garlic” bread that I made. I my overly zealous ambition to make something that could equal her dinner, I threw enough garlic to kill all the Cullen’s PLUS give Jacob a heart attack. Needless to say, we just at the lasagna and salad (and drank the wine). After dinner, we started in on the makings of the Thanksgiving desserts. Jess started in on her Apple Cake and I got to crackin’ on my Everything Fall Cookies. The cookies and cake took their toll on us and we were worn out. I mean, there’s only so much cooking one can do at like 8pm at night before you just need to sit down and watch iCarly or Sponge Bob.

"Big City" haircut

Tuesday morning was all set for some breakfast then off to get fancy haircuts in the “big city”. I had an appointment for 12:30 and since Chase needed to get a haircut, we got him squeezed in for noon. This was the first time he or Jess had been to one of them fancy hair cuttin’ places. So rather than an old man in a white coat bustin’ out some clippers and a comb from some blue liquid jar and giving you two pieces of double bubble gum after you hair cut, we got Cortex. After getting our hair did, we headed out. We popped in to El Azteka for some Mexican foodstuffs then decided it would be a great idea for Jess and Chase to be introduced to Ikea! As it turns out, it WAS a great idea. We got some really good ideas of some things we want in our apartment when they move in. We found a dining room table, some desks, a spring form pan, some paintings, a few pillows, and all and 6 insanely huge cinnamon rolls. Well, since the cinnamon rolls would’ve gone bad by the time Jan. 15 rolls around, so we decided to go ahead and nom on those. The rest of the day was spent enjoying each other’s company and prepping more food for Thanksgiving. Actually… now that I recall, the apple cake was made on Tuesday night. Either way it was a grand evening and just what we both needed.

Check out that cannon!

Wednesday was spent getting MORE things ready for what was turning out to be the Thanksgiving meal to end all meals. We did some prep work in the morning, then headed to the park. We took Chase’s bike so he could ride around and not be so cramped up. The day turned out to be perfect. The weather was just right, there was no one there, we found some balls and tossed’em around a bit, and generally had a great time. It was exceptionally nice to just spend some time with Jess and Chase outside, not in front of a TV getting frustrated at Boom Blox or watching iCarly. After the park, we loaded up the car with all our fixin’s and headed over to my parents house. The plan was to stay there Wednesday night so we could get up early Thursday and get to rockin’ on the lunch. This turned out to be a great idea. We got there that afternoon, and started in on the prep.

All that for 1 turkey?!

As I got started on gutting the turkey, Jess went to town on chopping up the veggies. She sliced like a ninja and cut like a razor blade through onions, celery, carrots, butter, herbs, and all manner of things. We got everything we could done and all set for our first official Thanksgiving together. All the pots were put away, the lists were double checked, the cookies had been nommed, and it was time for bed.

Next up is the adventures of our Turner Thanksgiving day, including decorating the fence, the most epic plate of food ever, and so much food that it would have been a pleasure to fall into a coma.

SniperBen,

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so what better time to tell you how THANKful I am to have you in my life. Thank you for loving me. For buying me flowers. For making me breakfast in bed. For running with me (and always stopping when I need to stop even though you don’t need to). For saying “Good Morning Sunshine” every.single.morning. For paying attention to small details. For adjusting to life with a 7 year old. For your surprises. For ALWAYS asking how my day is and actually caring about the details of it. For still opening the car door for me. For taking me on dates. For planning things and being patient when I want to be spontaneous. For listening to me mention that I want to try a dark chocolate Reese cup and showing up with one the next time you walk out of a store. For making me laugh until I can’t breath. For never letting me go to bed angry. For singing in the car with me. For letting me love you, for making me happy, and for so much more.

I can’t wait to spend our first holidays together. <3

I love you,

SniperJess

first. jojo knows hwo to press appleA. which mean he cna select all on the comoputer. he is the smartest cat on this planet. truth.

second. these fuckers on rockbandd have been clapping for like…decades. i know we rock. you can stop the applause now you stupid ass people@

also. this weekend was the shitznit! ben and i ran for 4 MILES! it was an really awesome run. the weather was perfect..the leaves were falling and the air was chilly. we found a new troute on the nike plus sitebut we thought we missed a road but how about i don tthink we did miss the road. we eneded up exactly where we wer e supposed to be and it was ssssssuch a good run! i think i miay have experience dhrunners high for the first time ever. ther ewas a time around mile 1.5 when i just felt like i could fly. we hadnt stopped to walk yet and somethign abut the music and the run and the waether and all of it  just gave me juice. i took off sprinting  and it was only for a few dozen feet or so but i felt awesomse. peeler rd. hill got me later in the run though. that hill kicked my ass. KICKED  my ASS. dude…it was bad. but i’m gonna dominate that hill soon. DOMINATE that mf hill. just wait

ok. so we also had a date night this wekened. we went to strip on friday night and it was soooooooooo good. best steak everah/! and we did some more stuff but i dont really remember what. oh! wiat…we went to j. christophers. for breakfast. it was deeeelish. except i really with i could eat eggs. dammit that make me mad! i had the saugage bisctuits though. and they were good. oh and we took pics of sppooky town tonight. i know halloween is over but we had to take asome pics of it before all the halloween decor is gone. so we’ll put that wawy tomorrow and get ready for thanksgiving and christmast!  we tried watching twilight too but we both passed out and woke p and it was over. boooo on that. it’s actually a really reallyb ad moive though\. and that kinda sucks. in case you didnt know i am pon day 14 of being smoke free. and also…jojo likes to eat my hair. wtf is up with that? really jojo? dont eat my hair…cmon.

i love you all. goodnight.