Ever since I took Trick to the horse rescue for the first time, he has been a little bit in love with them...  I knew he wanted to ride one more than anything so I decided to work a little Christmas magic :)

Krista and I picked him up in the afternoon - he had absolutely no clue what we were doing.  We just told him to dress warm and be ready for anything! :)

When we pulled into the driveway of the barn, I think he was in shock but Krista and I were loving every second of it!

At first we thought he was going to ride Dustin so we brought him into be groomed, but he ended up switching to Brody at the last minute!  (Brody is BEAUTIFUL...)  He rode Western and did really well!  He walked, trotted, worked on weaving in and out of some orange cones, and then even had a chance to ride bare back a little!

(P.S. I'm sorry in advance for the quality of some of these photos... I didn't have the greatest camera with me and the lighting was super weird...)

Here's a picture of Trick grooming Dustin!  (Dustin has super light blue eyes... I promise he's not scared/angry/creepy!!)

We got Brody all saddled up and Krista helped Trick get him into the arena!  Brody was wearing his show tack so he was all blinged out for Trick!  (Whooooo felt the need to ride in sunglasses?)  :)

Kelli was giving Trick the rundown of how this whole "getting on" thing was going to work...

And he's up and ready to go!!

Bareback cool down!

Krista seems to have been a little skeptical of what Brody was thinking at this point... but he's pretty so we forgive him for being a little frisky :)

After he finished riding, Trick wanted to spend a little time visiting Tiny... I think he was Trick's favorite :)  (And as you can see, is definitely not very tiny!! And also didn't really want to stand still for a photo op..)

(Tiny was apparently also feeling playful...)

Long story short?  I felt like cooking a big dinner for everyone... :)  Krista and I made a completely homemade (right down to the pie and cranberry sauce!) traditional Thanksgiving dinner for everyone.  It was absolutely wonderful :)

I'm so glad we were able to get this little group together!!!  After dinner?  A good few hours of Just Dance, of course!

Between the baby shower and Secret Santa gatherings, I'm not sure this weekend could have been any more jam-packed.  Well, unless we added going to Boston for a ballroom competition, of course.  Why did we do that again?? :)

It was Matt and my first competition dancing Open level Smooth.  We ended up placing 5th of the 5 couples, which was definitely a little disappointing.  But we danced really well and the team was super supportive and wonderful!  We also had the leader from the couple that placed second congratulate us on our dancing and he said he thought for sure we would be in the top 2 with them!  (I have no clue how he had time to watch us while he was dancing but, either way!  Super flattering!)  Given that it was our first competition at Open?  I'm thrilled... We just need to add a little bit of polish and I think we're good to go!  (No to mention, after looking at the couples, I'm pretty sure we should have had 3rd...)  Mom was also able to come to this one, which was really special (Dad was away on a business trip) and Rob came, too.

Anyways!  There are a few videos... but for some reason I'm not sure I want to post them at the moment... haha  (Ask me if you'd really like to see them and I'm happy to send you links!  You know... like if you're my Aunt Carol, or something) :)

Here are some photos from the day though!

This is probably my favorite of the day:

Big Day!!  EVERYONE came back this weekend for our group's little baby shower for Adrienne and James!

I am SO excited for both of them - due date is January 25th!!  It was great that we were all able to get together this weekend and be with them, too.

Being me, of course, I went with a mostly-homemade gift...

Baby fish hat!!!  I basically followed the tutorial I've used before by Thelma Egberts, found at Knitty.com.  I scaled it down to make it baby sized and it actually worked great!! 

And then I just rolled some onsies around different colored socks and held them with a piece of wide, black elastic to make sushi to go along with my little fish! :)  LOVE how the whole thing turned out!


Congratulations Adrienne and James!!!! <3

Since we already had everyone together this weekend for the baby shower, we decided to also try and pull of the annual Secret Santa!  We matched everyone virtually (thank you Secretsanta.com!) just before Thanksgiving, and then had everyone over to my apartment later in the evening after the baby shower to open gifts!

Earlier that morning, we did a little decorating to get in the Christmas mood.  Remember the Christmas Tree extravaganza from last year?  Well this year I didn't want to just redo the same thing (laaaame!) but didn't really feel like buying anything new... so we improvised!

I had a vision... similar invisible-hang-from-the-ceiling kind of thing but this time using red beaded garland that I had hanging around.  Brian came over early to help us decorate and volunteered to tackle the tree.  I kind of briefly relayed this to him and told him to just go with it.  

The end creation?

Essentially?  It's perfect.  EXACTLY what I was thinking!!  (This photo is at a semi-odd angle.. it's actually super symmetric, etc.)

Added bonus?  It's SUPER resilient!  I can't even count the number of people who have walked through it, thrown pillows at it, put their jacket on into it, Just Danced at it, etc...  

While Brian took care of this, Krista and I worked on the rest of the apartment. (Rob was busy making cookies...)

And here's the final group photo!

(I'm pretty sure this was the largest Secret Santa so far, as well?)