House Divided - Knoxville for the Mizzou/Tennessee Game

IT'S OFFICIALLY CHRISTMAS BREAK!  WOOHOO!  Last Thursday at our preschool we had our Christmas program and "school" was over until January 6!  I have been making cookies like crazy, and last week between 6 orders, I made 29 DOZEN!  Holy cow!  (I'm majorly scaling back in the New Year!)  Anyway, last night I finished my last order until the New Year and I am so excited for a little break.  I'm looking forward to getting my blog ALL caught up, which hasn't happened since well before the move.  So...here we go!

Back in November I had a WONDERFUL weekend visiting my sister and Curt in their new house in Knoxville!  We planned it back in the summer, and knew that the weekend Mizzou played Tenneesee in Knoxville, they would be moved into the house they pretty much gutted.  The timing worked out great and they had moved in a couple of weeks before.  Ryan stayed home to help with the girls and spend the last weekend of deer season hunting with his Dad, and my parents and I made the trip.  Brynn and Emory had a long awaited sleepover at Pamaws!

Friday we went shopping and ate lunch at Newks!

My Dad can find a friend anywhere, and outside of TJ Maxx he struck up a conversation with a guy in Tennessee gear.  Turns out this guy is the grandpa of TN's STUD running back...hilarious!

Repping the Tiger tale in Knoxville!

We had planned to shop in the morning and then come back and hang out and relax (and nap) in the afternoon before dinner, but it was after 7 before we stopped shopping.  We headed straight to dinner out and had the BEST time.  We laughed so hard we were crying! When we were leaving we were laughing about something SO HARD that my mom was making the loudest laughing noise EVER.  I'm sure people wondered what got put in our drinks...HA!

The car was a bit stuffed...

We got up Saturday morning and hit up a couple of more stores...

and then Lindsey had a fun house-warming party for some family friends that were in town.  We got ready and all headed to the game.

The rivalry between these two was getting intense...HA!  They have a cute sign in their basement with Mizzou and Tennessee  logos that says "house divided" and that's what it is...

We had SO MUCH FUN at the game, and our Tigers won a close one!  It was AWESOME!  (Not so much for Curt, but he was a good sport about it).

LOVE MY FAMILY and thankful for this special weekend with them!

This is how camping SHOULD be....

 Several weekends ago (actually, I just found these pictures and they are from even BEFORE our camping debacle) Ryan and Brynn decided to CAMP downstairs.  Again, this was BEFORE we decided we never wanted to sleep in a tent again.  (Actually if you read my post about our camping trip then you know how miserable I was...but Brynn had a good time, and Ryan was sprawled out on our air mattress taking up 75 percent of the room, so really it was just me and Emory awake all night, huddled up freezing cold, and Ryan and Brynn seeming to have a decent time...clearly I'm still not over that night.  HA!)

Anyway - Ryan and Brynn set up the tent downstairs (these are from the old house) and had a big ole' time.  Maybe I should have camped like this...I'm sure it would have been MUCH more fun!  =)

Playing dress-up in the tent.  HA!

 ??? HA!

And some random pictures of Emory at Pamaw's house...

Random iPhone Catch-Ups

Time for a random catch-up of photos from my phone...some are from our OLD house!  

Brynn LOVES to help "decorate" my extra cookies with the leftover icing.  

Emory was playing hide and seek where the new dishwasher would go (before we moved).

Old house stuff...special McDonald's dinner??

Helping move some boxes in...and driving around in the new basement.

Some mornings its just hard to get up...

The week right after we moved in somebody was under the weather...

Sorry Ryan...

Several weekends ago Ansley played in an All-Star soccer tournament and we got to watch a couple games...it was so fun!

The cousin crew (minus baby Hollyn...oh, well she's asleep in the stroller so all five are present!)

SOCCER STAR!

Our washer and dryer are ones my parents bought me in college.  We bought them from a guy who "refurbishes" (is that a word?) old appliances, and thought they'd last through college.  Well, 10 years later that WERE still going strong for the Bandermann household but have finally bitten the dust.  So I took the girls to Sears to look for appliances.  They thought the cart was SO FUN!  (At least until the snacks ran out...)

Decorating a tree upstairs with the girls!

We both needed haircuts a couple of weeks ago...

Kyle and Lance were able to come home the weekend before Thanksgiving before they moved to GUAM!  Pam and Rick had kind of an open-house bonfire thing and we busted out some old videos.  We got to re-watch the one of Kyle ripping his pants when he was about five...it is the best home video I've ever seen.  They totally should have entered it on America's Funniest Home Videos...they would have won!

I don't know why my pictures won't move around, but hanging out at the bonfire!

We had an early Thanksgiving before the guys left...Emory can put it away!

And all 5 of the girls (even Emory and Hollyn....that only took a few years off Sarah and me) put their hand-prints on a plate and gave it to Uncle Kyle as a gift before he left.

Being silly with Miss Alaina at Thanksgiving...

Life has kind of flown by in a crazy blur these past several weeks, but it's been filled with lots of fun and special memories!