Happy Holidays

We had our first holiday season as a married couple this year and got to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas in our home. We had a lot of fun cooking, decorating, and merry-making.


For Thanksgiving, we tried something new, an oil-less turkey fryer. You get a tasty turkey with crispy skin without all the oil and potential explosions. We spent most of the day outside on our patio, which is always nice. I also tried making cheesecake for the first time, a pumpkin cheesecake, and it was delicious. Samantha helped me with a lot of the cooking. We finished the weekend off by going to the FSU game. We had great seats and got to visit the F Club (thank you, Kourtney & Brian). Overall, it was a great weekend.

We started the Christmas decorations early in December to get in the spirit. Matt did an outstanding job and we were definitely the best Christmas house in the neighborhood! Maybe best in all of Archer... We also watched a lot of Christmas movies, I will have to have Matt list out all of the Christmas movies we watched this year. Sooo many. Right now, alll I can think of is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Santa Conquers the Martians. We also saw the Christmas Carol at the Hippodrome with Momma Stanton for our Christmas preview weekend. And we made Christmas cookies ala Martha Stewart, yummy.

For Christmas Eve, we tried our hand at Prime Rib (Roast Beast) and had a lovely dinner with family and our bestest friends (Marc, Jenny, and Momma Pepin). And then, we received one of the best gifts ever (not the Food Network Magazine subscription or the copy of The Annotated Alice or the Killer Bunnies game, which are also some of the best gifts ever) - Mom made us a book of The Stanton Journal. It has all the pictures and entries, and it is awesome. Now, we need to make sure we keep up on our blogging for next year. Then, the Christmas Elves came and delivered our pajamas, so it was time for bed. Chirstmas Day was fun and relaxing. We just hung out most of the day in our pj's and had fun opening up presents and watching more movies. My BFF, Erin, came to visit later that weekend and we had nice couple of relaxing days together. Always a treat! And of course more Christmas movies and we opened up the Killer Bunnies game. It's a funny, complicated, little game, but good times, nonetheless.

We are very blessed to have such wonderful family and friends and we had a beautiful holiday season. We will always remember this year. Our first year as Mr. & Mrs. Stanton and our first holiday season in our home. It has been a very special year for us.