My Girl

Today we attended service at Destiny Community Church in Newberry with our friends the Allens. DCC puts on many events here in Newberry and are really growing fast. Because they have outgrown their church, service was held across the street in the middle school auditorium.

Today was not their typical service. Committed, an acapella group and recent winners of NBC's "Sing Off", were here to perform a very up close and personal show.  It seemed pretty unreal that a group like this would visit a church and perform for a group of 300+. After all, they were used to performing on national television for millions of viewers. Just a few days prior, the pastor had seen his colleague post pictures with the group at a church near the band's hometown in Alabama. Being a huge fan of the show and the group he immediately called his friend who is the pastor of that church and asked how he managed to book them. His friend gave him one of the group members phone numbers and said "just call him and he should be able to get you in touch with their booking agent". After speaking with the group member for a while he said that they were going to be passing through and staying a night in Gainesville Florida and would gladly do the show without negotiating any fees. You can only imagine what this might cost had the booking agent actually been involved.

They put in a fantastic show and made fans out of us. They use no musical instruments other than their voices so everything you hear is singing. Simply amazing.  The harmonies are something that awed me at times. Their songs are very spiritual and poetic. They opened with "Sweet Home Alabama" then went into "My Girl".

A Time to Give Thanks...and Eat

This time of year is always so exiting in the Keyes house.  With all of the birthdays and celebrations it can become such a blur.  This fall has been exceptionally festive with our new addition to the family in October.  That was immediately followed by Levi's birthday, our anniversary, Kevin's birthday and of course Thanksgiving.  In the past we have hosted Thanksgiving dinner at our house for some of our close friends and have also traveled north to visit our families but this year we decided to change it up some.

Jenn's parents came to visit the week prior to Thanksgiving so it only seemed right to share our celebration with them.  Jenn and her mother prepared all of the food (while Rein and I went to the Gator game).  I'm sure it was special for Jenn to be able to cook with her mom in her own house and share recipes.  At the table we all took a moment during prayer to reflect on this past year.  There were moments of great distress such as when our good friends the Ferrells moved or the passing of Jenn's grandfather and my own father.  Then there were moments like the birth of Wyatt or Tyson starting school when our spirits were very high.  Even when our lives were filled with great sadness it was always such a joy to have our families brought closer together in light of the sorrow.  We are so thankful for the time that we do have with our friends and family.

Jenn, her Mom and Tyson prepare the brine for the turkey

Try cutting the turkey breast this way and every piece is thick and juicy 

On the ACTUAL Thanksgiving day, we were invited to the DiFranco's wonderful home in Jacksonville.  To say 'friends' or even 'dear friends' doesn't quite live up to how we feel about them.  They are the closest thing to family we have here.  They are really the kind of friends that we could have shown up unannounced on Thanksgiving day and they would welcome us with open arms...and that's what we did.  Ok, ok, we didn't just show up unannounced but we did sort of invite ourselves.  But of course they opened their doors and fed us with an enormous amount of food.  Luigi had been prepping his meal for at least a week or more and the food was amazing.  He makes lasagna from scratch using his mother's recipe and it was honestly the best Italian dish I have ever had.  Luigi even gave us a huge container of it at the end of the night and I ate this for breakfast lunch and dinner and lunch the following day.  Amazing.

The boys were super excited to go to "Uncle Weegi's" house not just because the DiFranco's are fun, or because they have been their first visitors after they were born, or because they have a pretty awesome house (complete with a waterpark in their subdivision when the weather is warm).  They wanted to see Sophia, their one year old daughter.  Sophia is a lot like Tyson in the sense that she seems older than her years...or year in her case.  For just being a little over a year old she has the mobility and dexterity of a 2 year old.  And she's really cute so the boys were all over her.  It was great to watch them interact and they played all day long.  After dinner and dessert we all sat around the fire and made smores.  The weather could not have been more perfect.  As we drove home that night Jenn and I wished that we lived closer to the DiFrancos but the drive to Jacksonville seems shorter and shorter each time so I imagine we will be making more trips out there.

The Turkey Cake

Notice the Levi slobber