Black Friday Presents

So I know that the day after Thanksgiving is normally about shopping... if you're brave enough, that is. And I definitely am -- I was up and out of the house around 6:30am and I got a ton of my Christmas shopping done. Anneliese and I had a fun morning together and then we met Mark and Nathan for lunch afterwards.

BUT that actually isn't the most fun part of today. We got presents!!! I mean, technically we gave them to ourselves, but they're still presents, and they are things we have been looking forward to.

The first thing (and most exciting for me) is a quilt we commissioned my friend Megan to make for us. I had a stack of my favorite baby clothes from Nathan's infancy (the ones I couldn't bear to part with, or that weren't hand-me-downs to be handed back, and some that were too stained or worn to pass on to others), and I didn't quite know what to do with them. As cute as they were, I didn't think they'd ever get worn again, and they wouldn't even be seen just packed away into a box. So we had Megan make a quilt out of them. And I love the result! The quilt is gorgeous, and we had so much fun looking at all the details in each square. We loved seeing Nathan's first swimsuit, the pants he wore to Nick's wedding, the sweet tiny pocket from his first tiny pair of jeans, his first "favorite" pjs with the fire truck... and the "I climbed the great wall" t-shirt we bought him in China when he was still in the womb. Anyway, it's awesome. Megan, you rock. :)

[Edited: Megan wrote about how she made it and now I'm even more impressed. Apparently all those different fabrics and the zippers and such presented some unique challenges. She's crazy talented.]

The second thing (and most exciting for Mark) is our new tv!! We have been using a very old bubble-screen television (seriously, Mark watched the twin towers fall on that very set) and for several years Mark has really been pushing for a new one. This year, our budget and the electronics market finally were in agreement, and so we could afford the one he really wanted. So we bought it as Christmas/birthday presents for each other. And it came just in time for him to watch the Clemson vs. South Carolina game tomorrow (which also happens to be his birthday). I must admit it's a little (ok, a lot) larger than what I was imagining. But it makes him really happy, and even I have to admit it will be nice to finally see the whole screen for any show we're trying to watch, not just the part that was cropped for our non-widescreen tv. Of course he has already started watching football on it. Here are Anneliese and Simon enjoying some game in widescreen HD.Personally, I think I am more excited about the old dvr being temporarily moved to our bedroom until we've watched everything on it and can turn it back in. Yay for dvr in the bedroom! And YAY for Black Friday presents!!