Thanksgiving...for Christmas!

It was a great weekend of family and thanksgiving. Erin and I are blessed beyond what words can describe. Thursday was a relatively tame Soper thanksgiving without the Bosches or Buntes but we still had enough for a 5 on 5 game of football. It was one of the coldest Thanksgiving games on record as temperatures were in the teens and the wind was blowing. The teams were me, my dad, Derek, Aaron, and Elizabeth against Paul, Marcus, Scott, Avery, and Lydia. It ended a 4-4 tie with the highlights being: a one-handed 4th down catch by Marcus for a TD, a long catch an run by Elizabeth for the youngest player to get a "legit" touchdown, and Scott dealing me a head blow to break up a pass but mostly to enact some revenge on me for giving him a concussion a couple of years ago. In a future blog I'll write about the most memorable Soper football game ever. We've had some great ones but unfortunately those days are winding down as the family continues to grow up and spread out.

On Friday the Elenbaases did some bowling and everyone witnessed how much better Hayley is at bowling than Ben. Ben was gutterboy all day and when Hayley was given a chance to bowl a frame on our bumperless lane she promptly rolled a spare in Ben's face. Later we went to Cindy's and saw Marv's DVD on his Mongolia trip.

Friday evening Erin and I went to Saginaw with the rest of the Veldhof family for a great turkey dinner and some dance, dance, revolution. Saturday we all headed to Birch Run for some sales and lunch before heading home.

Today was the official launch of Christmas for Erin even though I'd been in Christmas mode for most of November. I can't put my finger on a precise reason but I LOVE CHRISTMAS! It must be a combination of everything but I just love this season. I put up the lights on our house on November 6, about a week after I switched to 100% Christmas music. I'm pretty sure I inspired at least 3 other houses on my street to put up their lights a couple of weeks earlier than they normally would. With our house shining bright in early November I think I coaxed 3 others because when we came back from our trip last week they also had lights on. Today we put up our tree, made Christmas cookies, and did some more house decorations. Here are some shots of our new setup to accommodate my favorite holiday.



My goal is to add $30 to $40 worth of Christmas lights every year until our house is one of those annoyingly bright houses and I spend as much on electricity for those lights as I do for the rest of the house.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!