Monday, January 7, 2013

Thanksgiving 2012

I'm so overdue for posting about so many things, so for now I'm just going to try to catch up a little bit, which includes... Thanksgiving 2012. It's hard to believe it's already 2013 and we're past the big holidays for now. Wow.

Thanksgiving this year was supposed to be our year with my family downstate, but because of the NYC trip starting the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend I knew there was no way I could do it. So we stayed here and we had a great time with Tim's local family! Remember he's the 7th of 11 children, so when I say we were with Tim's local family, keep in mind that's his mom, his mom's cousin and her son, and 4 siblings and their families. I've never even met 1 of his siblings and many of them we see pretty rarely.

Anyway, I digress.

Last year Thanksgiving was overwrought with illness so it was not fun and a pretty lonely, boring day. This year was delightful! We woke up feeling good and I set right out to start baking up a storm! In a few hours, a pumpkin pie, cherry pie, and mint brownies had been concocted. Our house smelled heavenly!


In the midst of baking, I of course had to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade! Love. And saw my favorite character - Pillsbury Doughboy. {One of my favorite things about Tim when I met him was that he could imitate the Doughboy really well if you pushed his tummy. :) My kind of man!}

Also, let's not forget my Pillsbury Doughboy kitchen!


See that building right behind Doughboy? That's Macy's.

Just a few days after watching that parade on TV... I got to stand right here:


You guys. it. was. incredible!!!

Despite the chaos that had erupted, I realized I hadn't shown you guys my spiffy Thanksgiving decorations, so here's our table on Thanksgiving Day:


Pretend you don't see what's happening around there with the chaos. ;)

That evening, we were at Tim's mom's house with his family. Nephew Sam (11) never lets us take his picture, so I'm glad we were able to sneak this one in :)


Prepping in the kitchen with all the food.


Sis-in-law Becca's potatoes that look awesome and tasted... interesting. {Don't worry, she said so herself!}


There's always plenty of food in this family... as in way too much. My mom's family... well. We often run out LOL. My brother's wife & I were in charge of ordering the pizza for my mom's Christmas party with all uncles, aunts, and cousins. We had enough food without many leftovers. Perfect. Hahahaha! :)


Tim's brother had just finished off mom's basement and we were all able to fit in one big room! Suh-weet!!


Tim and sweet 3-year-old nephew Ashdyn.


Watching niece and nephew wrestling time! {It was cute, no harm done!}


My yummy desserts on display - the mint-flavored brownies were a big hit, the pumpkin pie was also all gone when we left, and the cherry pie was half gone but it's Tim's favorite so it's always nice when he gets to bring some home :). I love pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. I love pumpkin. I'd put pumpkin in virtually everything if I could! Can you believe I married a man who hates all things pumpkin?!


Becca and nephew Toby snuggling.



Tim's mom's cousin's son was dearly loved by 2-year old Toby! {what is that? first cousin once removed...? second cousin...? oy.}



Hanging out, watching football.


Nephew Sam trying to push over Uncle Tim. As you can see, it worked well.


Toby with Grandma, Ash, and Cousin Sally.


No Thanksgiving Day is the same without a complete review of all Black Friday newspaper ads. My husband collects them from a website for a couple of months prior, but I still prefer to look at all of them in paper form once they land. I was glad I brought these with to Tim's mom's house as I wasn't the only one looking through them - and it helped for nieces and nephews to point out ideas of what they wanted, yay! 


Black Friday is always fun for us. But this year because we really needed different things from different areas, we spent the day apart. We decided we didn't need anything urgent so we slept in and didn't head out until around 10. Our first stop was going to Menards together before we split up. We found a great deal on flooring for our spare bedroom that we're redoing, and while we were at it we picked up the paint we needed too!



Then I went north while Tim went south into far-away suburbs. It was good for us to both get a lot done, but it was hard for me to have us apart.

I love using Black Friday not just for deals, but for getting a solid chunk of my Christmas shopping done in one day. I know the stores are crowded, but really they are most days until Christmas after this day. The only time it gets crazy is with the insane deals and some of the lines, but I still think it's worth it. The hardest part for me this year was Kohl's. Usually Tim is with me and he stands in line while I shop. I got so many things and they didn't have any carts so I literally thought my arms were going to fall off after an hour of standing in line and pushing stuff with my legs a few inches every couple minutes.

But every deal I got was well worth it! The only bummer was being at Kohl's that long and having started that late, I did miss some of the early morning specials (before 1 pm) at some other stores like Cabela's where I could have used it. Oh well, the sleep was nice! Good stuff:



Long story made finally shorter, we were both happy with our finds! I had a few more stores I wanted to go to but I had to call it quits, my body was done by 3 pm. Tim was only out a few hours with one nightmare-ish experience at Fry's electronics. Don't bother with their website in-store pick-up. Sooo not worth it. Thankfully he found what we wanted other places though! Two more items for our in-home gym:



Woohoo!!!!

Traditionally my family always watches Home Alone over Thanksgiving weekend, so after lots of shopping on Black Friday, it was nice to relax and unwind with this tradition! 


Come Saturday night, we picked up my friend Anna at the Amtrak train station near-ish to us. Sunday morning was an early rise as we had a 10 am flight to NYC. Away we go!


Yes, my stuff is the one on the left. I'm not as regular of a traveler as she is and I don't know how on earth people pack that light for a week. I. just. can't.

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!!

1 comment:

Liz Mays said...

I am not sure those lines at Kohl's get better EVER on that day. It's enough to keep me out of there. I sure do like the way your family gathers and eats. Yum!