Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday I get super pumped about. I think that’s another reason why I’m totally team decorate-for-Christmas-before-Thanksgiving. I love the idea of being thankful and all but the actual thanksgiving food isn’t all that amazing to me (although Mrs. Charlotte makes some FIRE dressing!) and it’s just one of those holidays where not spending it with my family makes me a little sad. But this year my goal for the holiday season was simple: don’t let ANYTHING steal my joy about it! And I totally succeeded in this!
We have a few traditions surrounding Thanksgiving. I was pretty thankful that Tess still had her morning nap so the big kids and I could do our turkey cookies!
This was the first year that I was really hands-off for a good bit of the assembly process!
Our Elf on the Shelf, Hermey, returned on Thanksgiving morning. He made us his favorite muffins! We were SO thankful he came back. Britt touched him on Christmas Eve last year so this ENTIRE YEAR there have been concerns regarding his return. I’m talking tears in the bed kind of concerns. Whew! Glad he’s back! Santa sent a note with him letting us know that he knew Britt didn’t mean to touch him (it was a legit mistake) and that we had to be super careful not to touch him this year (foreshadowing).
For Thanksgiving we go to Mema’s for a BIG lunch with that side of the family and then we go by Little Mama’s and Big Daddy’s and spend quality time with them before coming back home. It’s really a well flowing day and it’s great to get to spend some GOOD time with the great-grandparents. Our kids are so blessed to have them and we know that they won’t be with us on earth forever so we try to soak up that quality time whenever possible 🙂
I’m so thankful for this crew right here!
Britt was helping to get Carter to smile for pictures, sweet girl!
“Are you my butter bean?!?!”
Our turkey cookies!
Mema was in heaven with precious Kara!
At church they gave out a speech to each child that I guess was read at the first Thanksgiving or something? It had some mega tough old school phrases and I was pretty shocked when Kye said he wanted to read it to everyone on Thanksgiving (and hand out candy corn to each person too). Of course I supported it and I was also surprised when he really did want to read it, even in front of a side of the family he doesn’t know super well! He did great with it too! Here’s part of it on a video 🙂
Not to be outdone, Britt also wanted to perform her Thanksgiving song from school…here’s a video!
The babies napped while we all visited and looked through the papers for deals for Black Friday 🙂
Tess is throwing some major shade haha
Once Tess woke up we went ahead and headed out to go to Big Daddy’s and Little Mama’s. They do a big dinner at their house that night with the Parker side of the family but since Thanksgiving was supposed to be a holiday with my family we started our own dinner tradition. I really think we get the best deal anyway because we are the only ones at Little Mama’s and Big Daddy’s during that time and we get a couple solid hours with just them!
Kye wanted to read his Thanksgiving thing to them and Britt also did her song, it was all so cute! Aunt Karen and Uncle Steven were there too and enjoyed hearing them. Kye’s reading reminds us all so much of Austin as he always had a knack for those big words 😉
Enjoying some Big Daddy time!
Aunt Karen took Tess to see the chickens and Tess wouldn’t stop saying “bawk bawk” She loved it!
We took our time visiting and got home with enough time to put together our Thanksgiving traditional dinner: ICE CREAM! Whoop whoop! It’s not every day you can eat ice cream for dinner and we do it RIGHT 🙂
Once the kids were down Jolee came over and we hung out until Mrs. Charlotte and Casey were done at Big Daddy’s and then we hit the town for some Black Friday shopping! I totally brought my stun gun along (told y’all…that was the BEST gift EVER for me!) and it came in handy. That sound def scares off any creeps in the parking lot at 1 am 😉
I’m pretty into deals and I will go ahead and say it: black friday shopping isn’t about deals. The deals aren’t that good! I ended up returning all the stuff I bought that night from Kohls b/c I got home and realized it was all cheaper online. Most stores jack up their prices and then mark them down you think it’s a big deal on black friday! I wasn’t in it for the deals, I was in it for the fun and it was a LOT of fun!!! We had a blast…I love these ladies!!!
Another tradition is Zach’s annual golf game with his Dad. It’s the father/son classic and they have a trophy and everything (of course). With Zach’s back issues he can’t really play much of golf but wanted to still take Kye out to take part in the tradition! Kye really loves golf and I’m ready for Zach’s back to get right so the two of them can go play!
Like Britt’s song said…we have so much, so much, so much to be thankful for. We are surrounded by an amazing family filled with such love and great times together. It was a wonderful day and couldn’t have gone more wonderfully!
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