Thanksgiving 2022

Thanksgiving this year has been such a great one! It's been SO nice having my mom back so we knew we'd be spending it with her this year. She's been doing so much to get my grandma's house updated and she had just finished the front and dining rooms so we were excited to see more updates.

I love celebrating the holidays, I wish there were more Thanksgiving things (songs, movies, traditions that were more than just for the day), but I still do what I can. We put up our decorations RIGHT after Halloween to give it as much time as possible. I've watched all my Fall/Football movies already haha (there's only about 4 or 5 I like so I watch them every single year, but I still love them). We do our own Thanksgiving meal at home so we can have our own leftovers, so I've been making lists of what we need and getting all the food items for that. I also have about 95% of my Christmas shopping done (and maybe have started on my Christmas movies too haha) so I'm a bit ahead there, which is a much nicer feeling than realizing I waited too long and now have to rush like all the other last minute fools haha.

My favorite way to start the day is by watching the Parade. I almost forgot about it this year. I know it usually starts pretty early, but luckily when I realized I had forgotten to put it on, it wasn't set to start for another 15 minutes. The girls are only semi into it, but it's still fun to share it with them and watch the performances, point out balloons I think they'd like, and of course see Santa at the end! Dinner wasn't until 4:30 so we enjoyed a lazy afternoon and then headed over right after nap time.

Basically...the only shots I got the day of

We didn't have too much we needed to bring to my mom's, it was a low key dinner with just my mom, Will, Grandma, and Andy (poor Rachel was sick and decided to stay home) so that made it easy with transporting 4 kids, our diaper bag, and some toys for just in case. The new setup my mom had with the "formal" dining room and front living room was so nice, very cozy! We visited for a bit and then once the turkey was done we got to dig in. There were lots of food options AND I didn't have to sit at the kid table (a running family joke haha) plus the girls got their own tv in the kitchen to watch a movie while they ate. We put Pierce down with some toys to play with in the front room (within eye shot of where we were eating) while we visited with everyone during dinner. It was actually pretty peaceful, no real stress. I also was excited to help clean up (normally that's the part I dread when we go over to someone's house for dinner) and it ended up going really quickly. Dessert was amazing and at that point the girls ate in the dining room with us so I didn't feel like I was ignoring them. 

The only down side to our Thanksgiving experience, and it really isn't SO bad, but I had been so focused on Gwen's party that I didn't realize Thanksgiving was SO close afterwards so we didn't do our shopping for anything we needed until the Sunday before it. However, the store ended up having everything on my list so it worked out well enough and I didn't even really stress about it (which is so new for me!). Oh and I accidentally planned our Santa picture on the same day as our Thanksgiving AND I was trying to work a couple house and get the house cleaned up for our decoration switch this weekend so it's been a busy day, but I've gotten it all done. And our food turned out so yummy so I'm glad we have that to look forward to for lunches and dinner this week (more leftovers means I don't have to cook as much and that's just the ultimate win for me haha).

At least our picture turned out cute