Thanksgiving 2013

Thanksgiving 2013 (only 2 weeks late!)

Let's start with the Friday after Thanksgiving Day.

We celebrate Thanksgiving with Mark's family on Friday to avoid conflicts with in-law's.  Will was crazy about Mamaw Carol's pumpkin pie.  I lost count of how many pieces he ate.

My mother-in-law has beautiful blue and white dishes.  We eat buffet style.  There are too many people to sit down at the table and pass the food around.  I grew up with a large extended family and that's how we had family meals.  My grandmother would leave the food on the stove and card tables set up by the stove and we'd line up and fill our plates.  There's something nice about big family gatherings.  Good food and good memories!

Here's Mamaw and the boys.

Here we are on Thanksgiving Day.  Once my grandparents were no longer at their old farmhouse, this holiday has never felt the same.  Our non-traditional Thanksgiving now consist of visiting the nursing home and eating lunch at McDonald's.  Here we are at Starbuck's before we headed home.

My grandmother was not having a good day and we were not able to visit her.  We were lucky to have a good visit with my great-aunt Oma.  She is 98.  Oma loves to watch the Dallas Cowboys.  Mark is a huge Cowboys fan so she and Mark discussed the upcoming game that evening.

To start the break we took the boys to the movies.

We also watched Christmas movies and decorated the house for Christmas over Thanksgiving break.

The boys have their own tree with multi-colored lights in their playroom.  The ornaments on this tree are ones that they have handmade or picked out each Christmas.

This is my first and last attempt at Black Friday shopping.  We tried to buy something at Walmart on Thursday at 7:30p.m. (Thanksgiving Day).  It was total chaos!  You can tell by the look on my face that Black Friday shopping is not for me.

Snuggled under a blanket with a warm cup of coffee and a good book on the iPad is for me.