I absolutely LOVE Thanksgiving....

Last year I wrote this Thankful post that pretty much sums up some of my feelings about the holiday.  Though I am going to miss our very special Thanksgiving from last year when Casey and I made our first Thanksgiving feast (you can read that post here), we are thankful to be with my family this Thanksgiving.

One of the reasons I love Thanksgiving so much is this lady:

This is my 93 year old grandma who is one of the coolest people I have ever known. 

  My grandma has always made the best Thanksgiving meal---she even killed her own turkeys when I was a kid---she means business!  She makes the best dressing ever and I could go on and on about the food.....but what I love most is who she is.  She's country and wears boggans.  She doesn't do anything fancy with the big meal, but it's some of the best food ever.  Her kitchen is small and we have to invent some crazy methods of fitting 14 people at the table, but we make it work.

She always says "It's not much" and "I hope you can find something you like" when the table is chock full of fresh vegetables and fixins that she prepared.  She is incredibly humble and wise.  I love to see her get tickled about things and to listen to her stories. 

She is so special to me and I'm thankful that she's my grandma.  I'm also thankful that I get to see her and the rest of my family this week.

A New Kind of Normal....

So, things have been all kinds of crazy the last three weeks....

Casey took the GRE...Autumn's mom had surgery....we both had some job interviews....we searched for and found an apartment....we moved.....the next day we took a weekend trip to Mississippi by way of GA to go to a friend's wedding and visit relatives....we got back home and set up our place...went back to the church we used to attend.....both got jobs and have trained/are training for them....

Today is the first day I can say I think we are settling into a new kind of normal....

There are days and moments when we miss Northern Ireland...the way things were there...and our friends.  There are days when all of that seems a distant memory and here feels strange yet strangely familiar.  But yes, we are settling in and getting used to things for now...

 Casey is currently applying to PhD programs for next fall, so we don't know where we will be this time next year...

But for now we've moved back to the Raleigh area...this is our latest adventure.....

(For those of you that want to know more specifically where, please do ask us!  We'd love to hear from you!)

We also would appreciate your prayers for PhD application and guidance to the right place and for our current jobs to give us increases in hours.

Thank you!  We appreciate you reading and keeping up with us more than you know!

Leaving you with a few pictures of my favorite time of the year....