Thanksgiving Weekend

I’ve long said I don’t love Thanksgiving.  Our weekend is too packed, and I just don’t enjoy it.  I vowed after this year that something would change.  I haven’t quite decided what that will be or how it will work, but we need to scale it back.  Don’t get me wrong, I love everything we do, I just don’t want it all in one weekend.  We’ll see how that plays out going forward, but for now, here’s a run down of the busiest holiday weekend ever!!

Mike, Alison, Scott, and Darryl joined us for Thanksgiving dinner.  So fun!!  Darryl brought green bean casserole and Adrienne gave him some advice, LOL.

We made the cousins take the obligatory picture!

Dinner was awesome and a group effort.

Lexi and Livy must have gotten ahold of my phone…I wonder if it was during clean up time??

After dinner we put in Christmas vacation, because it isn’t Thanksgiving until we watch that! 

Well, kinda watched it…

Then it was game time!  We agreed to play Pictionary jr. with the kids before adult games.  We were so glad we did because we could’ve missed this.

Swear to God it was both Sof and Nat’s turn to draw and the category was  body parts.  Get your mind out of the gutter people, it was fingernail obviously! 

Adult games produced an equal amount of laughs!

Em and I did some early morning black Friday shopping. We always have some things we want to get without the kids!

The kids wanted to go though, so we promised them when we were done we would come back for them.  We ended up taking Sof and Nat to see Santa while the big girls shopped.  It was perfect!  There was no line and I was even able to sneak some illegal pictures since the full elf crew wasn’t on duty yet!

We finished up with dinner at Olive Garden because apparently left overs aren’t good enough!

The next morning I made everyone decorate the tree because it was the only time Adrienne would be home with us to do it!

Then we headed to spend the day with Sal and do our dress shopping.  We tried a new store for the big girls and had instant success!  We were so happy!

Sal wanted a tree this year, so we stopped off at a lot to pick the perfect one!

  Finally we went to another local mall that has awesome lights and decorations.  We walked around and had a Starbucks.

The next day we headed to K-zoo to see the grandparents!   

We always celebrate the fall birthdays which include Sof, Emily, Adrienne, Grandma Jackie, and Steve!

There were some definite shenanigans with blowing out the candles.

Grandma always gets the girls ornaments(and Em and I too).  This year mom brought her to Pier One and she picked out woodland animals for everyone.

Natalie wanted to use her little hedgehog for a toy.  She kept trying to play with it!

Grandma was especially passionate about getting Sofia a bird.  She remembered how much Sof loved the bird unit in second grade and wanted the perfect little bird for her.

She picked a cute little moose for Kaitlyn.

Matching deer for Lexi and Livy because they seem to always be a pair.

Adrienne’s was a little different style because Grandma wanted an elephant for her.  It was so cute and just perfect!

Grandma really knows each kid!

It was a great weekend, but the most relaxing part of it was the first hour of the first day.  While I love all of our traditions and people, next year I will make more time for this.