REASONS I SMILE

Sweet Potato Casserole

Every year at Thanksgiving and Christmas we have sweet potato casserole, Nana's recipe of course. It is delicious. The best part of the casserole is the marshmallows, and there are a few tricks to making sure that it turns out well!

What You Need:
Campfire brand marshmallows (using this brand is key!)
2 large cans (or 6 large boiled/baked, skinned, mashed) sweet potatoes
1 stick melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
2t cinnamon
1/2 cup canned evaporated milk

What You Do:
Preheat the oven to 350
Mix the potatoes, butter, sugar, cinnamon, 1/4 cup milk. Add a little more milk to reach preferred consistency.
Spoon into lightly greased baking dish.
(Can be refrigerated up to 3 days or frozen for 1 month ahead of time, thaw at least 12 hours in fridge) Put the casserole in the oven for 30 minutes or so, until it starts to look done.
Top with marshmallows and put it back in the oven, on the bottom rack for 15-20 minutes more, until they are golden!

Christmas at the Beach

After our weekend in Atlanta, we headed back to Raleigh, grabbed the rest of our stuff and the dogs and headed to the beach to visit Trey's parents for the week.

When we got there Monday night we exchanged Christmas presents, since we didn't see them on Christmas. We spent a large majority of the week lounging around. It was so nice. I was afraid we would be so busy/stressed over break with so many plans and vacations but it was awesome to just go to the beach and hang out.

Tuesday we went shopping, part of Trey's Christmas present was to go shopping and get some new work clothes. After Christmas sales are the way to go!

Tuesday night we went to the Elks Lodge to play Bingo! It was a lot of fun, kind of stressful with so many cards and pretty entertaining. Some of those bingo players play multiple times a week and are pretty serious. Trey and I were so close to winning a couple of times but never did. BJ did win once, but so did 2 others at the same time so they had to split the pot.

Trey got an awesome Dogfish Head ceramic growler for Christmas so on New Years Eve we stopped by The Promiseland Market to fill the growler and have a drink.

We had a delicious New Years day dinner complete with black eyed peas and collards for good luck and money!

Aside from a walk on the beach, some more shopping and visiting family we didn't do much else! It was a nice break to relax before coming back to the grind.

Atlanta for Panthers vs Falcons

Trey and I have decided to try to make it to an away Panthers game every season, and this was our first one! We headed down to Atlanta on Saturday the 27th. We got there just in time to enjoy a few free samples from SweetWater. They are only open for a couple of hours in the late afternoon.

We headed to check in to our hotel. We stayed at the Georgia Tech Hotel, right on the edge of campus. We wanted to stay in Midtown, since there are a decent number of bars around and found it on the Hotel Tonight app as a last minute cheap deal! (Only downside, you don't get to pick your room - we got 2 queens instead of a king bed)

We walked to dinner a few blocks away at a Mexican restaurant, Escorpion. It was really good! After dinner we walked around to find dessert somewhere and brought it back to the hotel room to enjoy in bed. It was so nice to take it easy and sleep in Sunday morning.

Sunday we got Starbucks and wandered through the Georgia Tech campus to walk towards downtown. We went to Centennial Olympic Park, thought about going in to the World of Coca-cola but it was PACKED! We checked out the CNN center, also packed! Apparently it was quite a tourist day. We walked to "The Underground" since we had read it was one of the things you should do/see in Atlanta... quite a disappointment. It was basically an old, not-so-great shopping center that was just 1 story underground. Almost like a flea market.

On our walk back towards the Georgia Dome from "the underground" we had to buy tickets for the game. We checked out lots of possible options and then finally decided on some, went straight to the gate and had success getting in! shew, I was just glad to be inside :)

The stands cleared out early since the Falcons were losing!

The game was so much fun. There were a lot of Panthers fans around us, so that was nice. Even the Falcons fans around us were nice and way better to deal with than the WVU fans in New York. It also helped that we not only beat the Falcons we demolished them! It was the game that decided the NFC South Champion (and playoff contention) so it was pretty exciting.

After the game we wandered through the park at night, stopped for a drink at the Hard Rock and then on to a craft beer bar, Publik Draft House, for a drink before heading in for the night. It was a busy day, I ended up getting 28,000 steps on my fitbit!

Monday morning we got up and had breakfast at the hotel before heading back to the CNN center. Since we didn't get to do the tour the day before, we decided to sign up for the early tour on Monday. We got to see "behind the scenes" of the CNN Headquarters. I thought it would be more behind the scenes, it wasn't amazing, but it was still pretty interesting.

Christmas

On Christmas Eve we decided to stay the night at my parents house, so Trey and I exchanged presents at our house before we left for the night. He got a new T-Rex shirt that he was pretty excited about :) And the dogs enjoyed opening gifts too. They love to stick their head in the gift bag in hopes that they can pull out a toy.

We had dinner at Mam-maws and then came home to enjoy a night-cap and some Christmas movies.

On Christmas morning mom made breakfast and then we opened gifts from each other and Santa.

Chad got Vegas a Panthers jersey and Tyson a sweater to match a Christmas sweater that Trey has.

Lucky had a lot of fun Christmas morning. This is his first Christmas since Chad adopted him, who knows what his life was like last Christmas, but I think it's probably way better now :)