Happy Thanksgiving!

Usually every holiday is spent us driving from house to house and stressing what days we spend with what family. This year Thanksgiving was a little stressful at first but actually turned out perfect with the Apple Cup happening the Friday after Thanksgiving! That gave us the chance to spend Thanksgiving with my family and the Friday after with Ray’s family. (Sorry for the serious lack of photos!)

My mom hosted Thanksgiving at her house for the first time and it was wonderful! She saw a cute idea to make place tags for each person and on the back of the card that person has to write what they are thankful for, then they were hung on a tree and it became the ‘Thankful Tree’. Our plan was to start a tradition of this each year and the following year see what everyone had been thankful for the year before. My parents cooked 2 turkeys and made 10 pounds of potatoes for all 24 of us. The potatoes were gone by the end of the night! We had a lot of Grandma’s recipes and pies and my mom even got to borrow some placemats that were Grandma’s. Madi got to sit in her high chair and make a mess with mashed potatoes and stuffing, we learned then that this girl LOVES mashed potatoes!  (Sorry no photo of the mess after.) It was so nice to have Grandpa there, he wasn’t feeling too great but I think he just enjoyed being with the family. My family loves to play games together – pretty much my favorite part of our family get-togethers! It is usually the women playing games while the men watch some sort of ball game on TV and this holiday was no different. At one point I went out to the family room and every inch of the huge couch was covered – half of the people napping!

On Friday I got myself and Madi up early to go out shopping with my family at Southcenter mall. I got there about 9am and left at noon. I think I got there at the perfect time because I had missed the crazy people there for opening but the afternoon crowd hadn’t shown up yet. None of the lines were crazy and there was still product available. When I left the mall at noon it was CRAZY! Like took me 30 minutes to get out of the parking garage crazy! Do not ever plan to get to the mall at noon on Black Friday!  I mostly spent the time with Nancy, Erica and Tara, trying to find a dress for Tara’s Homecoming dance. We didn’t buy a dress but found a couple maybes. It was nice to get to spend time with those girls! As I walked through Nordstrom though I saw the perfect TOMS for Elli and now I’m just dying to buy them for her!!

That afternoon we went over to Rhonda’s house to eat more and watch the Apple Cup! We watch the game together every year so this worked out perfect to join Thanksgiving and Apple Cup! Randy had to work so Rhonda called DirecTV and ordered a DVR to get there before Friday in order to record the game and watch it when Randy got off work. Rhonda is the only Husky fan in the family – us kids are all Cougar fans. You could say the house was a little loud during the last quarter/OT with us kids getting excited! It was a wonderful game and a lovely night as always spending time with family. Elli adores her auntie & uncle and has super energy with them!

This year I am thankful for many things – see next post with copies of my 30 days of Thanks from FB. But mostly this year I am thankful for my family. With losing my Grandma in October we all came together and supported each other. We all understood each other’s pain and spent those sad days together. I am also so very thankful for my girls who even though test my patience daily, give me the most joy, the biggest smiles and a heart just bursting with love.  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and would love to know what you were especially thankful for this year.