A Mehaffie Thanksgiving!

Our second married Thanksgiving was another really fun and exciting one full of food, fun family, and of course, CELEBRITIES!!!!!

The festivities started with the arrival of Luke's Gammie and Aunt Marilyn, on his dad's side. Gammie is the Matriarch of the family, one of the original Mehaffies, but she is as spunky as ever!!! Her and Aunt Marilyn live in Ohio and come down every Thanksgiving faithfully!

We eat out all week and have lots of fun talking about everyone when they were smaller. The highlight, besides Thanksgiving dinner, is when Aunt Marilyn takes the family out to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. It's a really nice restaurant and it's the best steak that Luke and I have all year. We always take a family photo after dinner.Left to Right: Daniel, Catherine, Luke, Christine, Gammie, Mike, Alinna (Daniel's fiance'), Sharon, Rockie, and Aunt Marilyn. Our family is just growing and growing!!

Then it's Thanksgiving Day!!! This year, Daniel invited Alinna's family over for dinner. We had a total of 20 people there for Dinner. Christine decorated the tables and I made place cards for everyone. Luke even put some ice breaker questions on the back of them to make for some interesting dinner conversation.

There's another table of 8 around the corner for the kid's. And yes, Luke and definetly sat at the kiddie table. Since we weren't the couple of honor, we didn't get to sit with the adults. The kids were great entertainment though.

With 20 people coming we needed a big turkey:

It was 18lbs. plus another separate turkey breast that was about 2-3 lbs. So total, 21lbs. of turkey. That's one pound for each of us!!!!! Everyone brought food, and totally overcompensated with the 20 people.

So, though there were 20 of us, there was soooooo much food, that very little of it got eaten. That's Larry ( old Mehaffie friend) being silly with our buffet! Those crock pots at the end are FULL of mac & cheese and mashed potatoes. There was also like 6 desserts to choose from, since we hadn't stuffed our faces already!!! but they were all OH SO good!!!

After dinner, everyone zonks out with Hairspray, My favorite movie of the year!!!!! Luke and I took a walk at the art museum. God provided a beautiful day of cool temperatures and strong winds, our two favorite things. The fall foliage is still beautiful in North Carolina!!! Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the start of the Christmas Season!!!!

Beautiful Fall!!

Luke and I love the Fall. It's our second favorite time of year. We love the wind blowing and watching all the trees change color. This year we've noticed how much more brilliant the fall colors have been. Some of these trees have been so beautiful. What a testimony of God's creativeness in His creation. We have a tree right outside our window that has been most exciting. The gradual change looked like something I hadn't seen before. Check it out:

Then about a week later, it turned a firey orange red color. In the morning, when the sun hit it and came through it, it looked like it was on fire. Luke and I would just stare at it out the window.

As the wind started to pick up, the leaves began to fall. I love the wind and standing under that tree with the leaves falling made me feel like I was in a movie. It was beautiful but now, when we look at our tree .......

.......it's just not the same and Luke and I miss it already. I know you must all think that we're dorks, but Luke and I both absolutely love this time of year and feel the need to take it all in as much as we can.

I did, however, get obssessed with leaf picking this year. I saw a magazine article with all these great home decorating ideas with leaves. There were plates,picture frames, tray tables and candles. The only one I really got around to was the candle decoration. It was super fun doing it. I was going to take it over for Thanksgiving but there was already going to be a flower decoration there. So it stayed at home for Luke and I to enjoy. Oh yeah, Missy loves the fall as well!!

Happy Fall!!

New Favorite Hymn

Hello dedicated readers, Luke here. Earlier this week, I was looking on the ol' net for any a cappella groups in Raleigh because I have an interest in starting (a christian) one. Maybe one of these days I actually will. Anyway, I stumbled on to this group based out of Oregon named "Rescue". I listened to the song that automatically plays when you open their home page (Before the Throne of God) and have decided that it is my current favorite hymn. I have heard it before, but something about listening to these guys sing it SO beautifully made the words hit my heart a little deeper. Here is the link with the words to the hymn below:

ps-click the video of the vocal percussion demo on the right if you really want to be impressed!

http://www.rescueministries.com/index2.html

Before the throne of God above

I have a strong, a perfect plea:

A great High Priest, whose name is Love,

Who ever lives and pleads for me.

My name is graven on his hands,

My name is written on his heart;

I know that while in heaven he stands

No tongue can bid me thence depart

No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair,

And tells me of the guilt within,

Upward I look, and see him there

Who made an end of all my sin.

Because the sinless Savior died,

My sinful soul is counted free;

For God, the Just, is satisfied

To look on Him and pardon me

To look on Him and pardon me

Amazing grace how sweet the sound!

Behold him there, the risen Lamb

My perfect, spotless righteousness,

The great unchangeable I AM,

The King of glory and of grace!

One in himself, I cannot die

My soul is purchased by his blood

My life is hid with Christ on high,

With Christ, my Savior and my God

With Christ, my Savior and my God

Mehaffie Boys in Nacho Libre!!

This is Luke and Daniel at the NC State Fair doing their version of their favorite Nacho Libre scene: Get that corn outta my face!!! No, Luke didn't wear his pants like that all night long! What do you think about their performance?

Happy Birthday Luke!!!

Today is Luke's Birthday!!! Happy Birthday Honey!! We did the family celebration on Sunday after chruch. Birthday's are very important in the Mehaffie family and we always go out to dinner and have lots of presents! So this year when we asked Luke where he wanted to go to eat he said:

Yup, McDonald's.

There was no convincing him otherwise. This is where he wanted to go. He has really great memories of eating there with his family and he wanted to do it again. It was fun. Look how happy he looks!! No, Luke did not eat all that food. And here's the family. What an adventure we had trying to get this picture. After McDonald's we all came back to our home to have brownies and ice cream. We opened presents and continued in our family tradition of showering words of affirmation and encouragment on the birthday boy. This is the first time we have used our "You are Special today" plate. Luke loves brownies and ice cream, mostly the ice cream. Tonight for his actual birthday, I'm taking Luke out to the Cheesecake Factory, one of his top 5 places, and maybe take in a movie. Happy Birthday Lucas!!!

On Saturday night, Luke had his first concert with his a capella group, Looney Tunes. It was fun and the whole Watkins and Mehaffie families were there. Luke had two solos and he did sooooooo great. I was so proud of him.

This was his first solo, "Found Out About You". And this was his second, "Mack the Knife". They had wardrobe changes and everything.

It was really fun getting to watch his group and three others, two from State and one from UNC-G. All in all, it was a great weekend with family!!!

Holidays Fit for the King!

This morning, I attended a Women's Fellowship at Providence. This was my first time at Holiday's Fit for the King! It was a great time of fellowship and a time of preparation for the holidays both in home and in heart. I was challenged that through the busyness of celebrating the season, to never forget the Prince of Peace, Jesus, that we are celebrating. I then attended two great workshops on Creating Christ-Centered Christmas Traditions and Creating Keepsake Ornaments. They were both so much fun. My friend Anna and her friend Dana joined me and we all had a great time. The table decorations for the breakfast were absolutely beautiful! I put them on a slide show below. Each table had it's own theme. I felt like I was walking through a Christmas magazine, really. When the day was done, I was feeling all Christmas-y and had to remember that it was just the first weekend in November and Christmas was still a little bit away. Luke and I are FIRM believers that Christmas music asnd decorating does NOT begin until the day after Thanksgiving. So take that all you crazy marketing people!! We had a great time and I hope that Sharon will let me be the table decorator for Thanksgiving!

Beautiful Table Decorations!

Happy Halloween!!!

Luke and I will always be kids at heart and we will always dress up for Halloween! Me mostly, becuase I work with kids so I got to dress up Tuesday and Wednesday and Wednesday Night.

Luke was a Scottishman and he's very proud of the fact that he didn't buy any part of that costume. I know it's hard to believe but really, he didn't. And he even had a great accent to go with the costume!
I was a beautiful fairy princess! Complete with a sparkly face and sparkly ribbons in my hair. I had that material from a Techno Dance Party we had when I worked with the youth in Greenville. So I took that and made a skirt out of it. I, unfortunatly did have to make a purchase for the costume, I didn't have a pair of fairy wings just lying around the house. Providence had a Fall Festival and Luke really really wanted to work it to see all the cute kids. I guess he had great memories of it as a child. We had a great time and all the kids were so cute. We were done at 8:30 and by 9:30 we were pooped and in bed. What a difference from all the Halloweens that Luke and I had at ECU! Hope you had a great Halloween too!!!