Monday Notes

While I love all the travel posts of things I've done, sometimes I just want to talk a little bit about what's going on in life right now. This is a new, probably occasional, series where I'll do just that.

- This weekend was up and down. My gramma passed away Saturday, and even though she hasn't been doing well for several years, it's still been hard on everyone. I spent a lot of time with this set of grandparents growing up since we lived only an hour apart, and I'm happy that I have so many good memories of them. (My grampa passed away when I was 11.) I was able to say goodbye on Thursday (one more reason to be grateful we live back in the Midwest). Several other family members were able to come up, too, and it's been nice to see them.

- Because of this, Thanksgiving just got a little more crazy. We are now officially hosting a 21-person Thanksgiving. I haven't put up photos of our condo yet, but suffice it to say that we are going to have a cozy family gathering :) I am actually really ridiculously excited about this. It's the first time we've ever hosted Thanksgiving! We are starting off with a bang! Plus we are also having Eric's family stay with us for the whole weekend (and my brother one night), so I get to play B&B host while also running a restaurant. I want to be very clear when I say: this is my favorite thing to do. I love having people over, I love hosting them, I love feeding them, and I love preparing for them. My heart gets even happier than it normally is when we have company.

- After the Thanksgiving festivities are over, we are going to decorate for Christmas. Eric and I LOVE Christmas decorations. I will make sure to put up photos.

- After losing my first game of the season last week in Fantasy Football (I was 10-0...ugh!), I came back with a vengeance this week. I had both Josh Gordon and Knowshon Moreno score 29 points, among very strong performances from several others. I play fantasy with most of my guy friends from high school and a couple of their dads, and this is our 7th year in the league. I'm the only girl and also the reigning champion, not an easy feat with this group.

- I hope everyone has a great start to their Thanksgiving week! I am taking off tomorrow through Friday to prepare everything and enjoy all our company, and I can't wait! I'm going to prepare posts to run throughout the week and hopefully share some of our Thanksgiving with you, too :)