Happy December to you all! What a fun and magical month this is. It brings me no greater pleasure than to lead off December 2016 with a Thursday Rundown.

Thanksgiving Recap – I apologize for not writing a Thursday Rundown last week…I was a little busy celebrating a certain holiday. I think it is only proper that I post the obligatory Thanksgiving spread photo in this post. If you count, you will see that we had 19 different dishes to enjoy. NINETEEN! The food was incredible and I stuffed myself silly. As usual, great work by the Mathis family.

A look at our large Thanksgiving spread.

Christmas Movies – We have prepared for December by watching way too many Christmas movies in November. Besides a full slate of Hallmark movies I have watched bits and pieces of with Sidney, we also watched a couple of classics over the past couple of nights. On Tuesday, we watched “Rudolph” and then last night we watched “Christmas Vacation.” Before watching the Chevy Chase holiday staple, I asked Sidney if she felt we were going a little overboard. She said no.

A look at the movies we watched over the past two nights along with the tweet I sent out about Sid’s willingness to watch “Christmas Vacation” in November.

First Visit to Sam’s Club – Some might find this hard to believe, but in my three decades of life, I had never visited a Sam’s Club before. This fact isn’t just because I am a Costco fan, rather, the truth is that Sam’s Club locations didn’t exist in the previous places I lived. But this past weekend, I finally went through the doors of the alternative wholesale warehouse giant. My initial impression? It was much more like Costco than I thought. I was hoping for some obvious differences. However, besides the store layout (which was actually in some ways similar to Costco) and the non-crowded aisles, Sam’s didn’t really distinguish itself from “the other guy.”

Price Is Right – On Tuesday night, my mom and sister were audience members at the Price Is Right. But before you ask me if they met Drew Carey, let me tell you something. They attended the non-TV version of the show that travels around the country. As you can imagine, Drew and his models don’t extend themselves past the main Price is Right studio in Hollywood. My mom and sister attended their show at Northern Quest in Spokane. Although they were eligible to be contestants, they were never told to “come on down.” But they had a really good time and looked great in their cliffhangers t-shirts.

My mom and Miranda in their t-shirts before they went off to the Price is Right.

From the Archives – Oh man, I have a couple of great posts I wrote on this date in previous years. Two years ago, I wrote about an extremely unique and special tradition my dad did for us kids growing up. Then, three years ago on December 1, 2013, I wrote about a very uncomfortable situation I found myself in when I picked up a stranger in the middle of nowhere. If you want some of my more recent stuff, just last year on this date I wrote about the hottest Christmas lights trend (one that I am following this year).

My dad had a neat tradition where he would create drawings for us on special occasions. Here is some of his work from my high school years.

—————–

May you all have a blessed month. I am excited for these next several weeks and I hope you are too. Don’t Blink.