Before we got married Matt and I agreed that since our families are both so far away, we would "trade" major holidays every other year. This year I had Thanksgiving and he had Christmas. Since Jackson was only 6 weeks old I wanted to stay at home, and happily Matt's family was able to drive down to our house. My Grandad came up from the lake and our good friend Marisa was also there. You would think with a house full of southerners (minus Marisa) we could all make gravy, but turned out only one of us knew how... good thing I had a supervisor.
Matt made a cajun brined turkey on his big green egg that was pretty darn tasty. I wanted to try a few new recipes, one of which was Chipotle Smashed Sweet Potatoes. Delish! We also made the infamous Atomic Peas. Nothing healthy about them, but not a pea left afterwards.
There is a cut down your own Christmas tree farm not too far outside of Birmingham so the day after Thanksgiving we headed down there. My family is the "oh, it's Christmas Eve so maybe we should get the tree out of the attic now" type, so getting a tree in November was definitely a first. The tree farm was also doing hay rides and still had the corn maze left up so it ended up being a really nice little trip. I think we've started a new family tradition.
After all that work we needed some relaxation and football, so we headed over to the just opened Avondale Brewery. Their logo is an elephant. Turns out that years ago the zoo was in the same park where the brewery is now. The elephant trainer walked the elephant around the neighborhood every day and let him swim in the pond at the park. Little kids fed him ice cream. The elephant lived there for years until the zoo moved. The brewery has some great beers on tap and is off to a promising start for being a very cool place in Birmingham.
We also went for a nice little hike over at Aldridge Gardens, one of my favorite spots. Mr. Aldridge loved hydrangeas and they still grow some of the prettiest flowers you've ever seen.
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