A Very Christmas Thanksgiving

This year was the first year of our marriage that we spent Thanksgiving with Matt's side of the family in Wisconsin. Granted it IS only our 3rd Thanksgiving as a married couple! The first two years we spent Thanksgiving in Jackson and Christmas in Wisconsin. It was really fun for Matt because it has been several years since he was home for the Thanksgiving holiday. We got SUPER lucky with our flights in the fact that: they. were. free! Yes, free! I won a "grand prize" at a charity fundraiser and received two free tickets on Southwest. Talk about "winning!" We made the flight arrangements in the summer and the total we "saved" was $904! Yikes Thanksgiving flights are expensive!

We arrived Wednesday around dinner time and went with Fred and Karen to our favorite Italian place! Thanksgiving day was very traditional...football, food and family. Karen had an amazing brunch spread with the cutest spinach-artichoke dip in a real pumpkin with Packer-colored chips!

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Inbetween the Packer game and dinner the boys played a bit of football. I did not participate this year as it was football last Thanksgiving where I broke my finger. I am not ready to get back on the horse yet!

Love this picture

Wonderful family meal!

When we were in Napa we tasted this wine and it was amazing. We all agreed it would make a perfect holiday meal wine! Fred and Karen bought a few bottles as did we (well just one bottle for us!). It was fun to enjoy such a good wine!

The rest of the evening we sat in our food comos and watched movies!

Loungin' around

 Since we were not coming back for Christmas we did some joint-holiday celebrating...including a trip to the spa Friday morning.

Karen's annual St. Nick gifts to the girls...pedicures at THE MOST amazing pedicure place ever!

Friday afternoon we headed to Waukasha to celebrate with Dan and Denise. Aunt Anna and her kids drove all the way up from Chicago to surprise us. It was really nice to see them...as well as Matt's grandma!

While Denise was making magic in the kitchen we put up ornaments on the Christmas tree. Now, you might recall a few posts ago I "gasped" when Matt suggested a fake tree...but I will admit, Denise's fake tree is pretty awesome. 

Continuing Christmas we did our secret santa exchange with the siblings and their significant others. 

As well as got our St. Nick ornaments. I got a cute Santa face and Matt got a Packers helmet! I think "Norman's" campfire was my favorite though. 

Sunday we had a really cool experience - getting to go with Laura and Chris to look at a wedding venue...the same venue where Jared's sister got married = where we met!

One of the best parts of the trip was the fact that all of our flights were on time! Unbelievable!