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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Thanksgiving 2016

We had a great Thanksgiving this year! 

First things first, we kicked off the day by watching Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV! Ella's favorite part was seeing Santa and the reindeer ("like Sven" from Frozen...seriously?!). 


Lulu hung out with my dad and several teethers pretty much all day. #teethingisfun


After both kids had a nap, I managed to get their picture before someone messed up their outfit. A Thanksgiving miracle!


Ella decided we didn't have enough going on in the kitchen, so she chose to color her heart out at the kitchen island. 


Trav and his dad smoked the turkey on our charcoal grill. It turned out really well!


All of the boys watching football :)


Usually my sister-in-law cooks pretty much everything for us, but she got stuck at work this year. So my mom, mother-in-law and I made pretty much everything (except the turkey, see above). 


Our menu (Trav suggested all of it--he's such a foodie--and I just looked up recipes for everything):
Turkey
Mashed Potatoes
Broccoli casserole
Cranberry Blue Cheese Salad (I make this for every occasion ever and it is SO good!)

And then for dessert we had cheesecake and pumpkin cookies

Since I was stressing over making all of this food, I took the lazy way out when it came to setting the table...


We already have some Christmas decorations hanging on the light fixture. I bought cranberries and flowers at Trader Joe's and threw both in vases. I already had the chargers and napkins, so I just kinda made it work. Maybe I'll put forth more of an effort next year....but don't I always say that every year?!


Ella got to eat with her special placemat she had made at preschool, PLUS my mom made her this turkey shirt! There is a feather for each person who was at Thanksgiving dinner this year. 


And Lulu? He chowed down on some carrots, bath toys (no seriously, that orange ring is a bath toy) and rice cereal. Yum. 


He already told me he can't wait till next year when he can eat EVERYTHING!

After our meal, we had a little photo shoot!




And Lucas stared at our Christmas tree for a solid hour before going to bed. He loves those lights!


Later that evening, I had a panic attack about cleaning up all of the dishes. I am not even joking. There were so. many. dirty. dishes. I swear, my OCD gets worse by the day. Anyway, after the dishwasher finally finished the first load, we were able to run a second load (this is bringing back bad memories just typing it out, ha! I was literally freaking out about these dirty dishes. It was borderline complete insanity. #firstworldproblems for sure) and finish cleaning up the kitchen. My mom thought the best thing for both of us at that point was to do a little shopping, so we went off to Target at 10 PM! We've always shopped on Black Friday, but never Thanksgiving night. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess. 


All toys at Target were buy one, get one 50% off! My mom and I figured we'd scoop up Ella's 2 biggest presents (one from her and my dad, one from me and Trav) and split the cost. If you're curious, we were trying to get her this Frozen castle and this Lion Guard play set. Well...we get up to the register and guess what? The Lion Guard is Disney JUNIOR brand (not regular Disney, like the Frozen thing was), so it wasn't included in the BOGO 50% off promotion! Ugh! So we put both things back and just ordered them on Amazon. But it was not a complete waste...at least Lucas got a few presents! 
And don't worry...we were shopping again at the mall by 10 the next morning! 

So that was our Thanksgiving! Some ups and downs, but all in all a great day with our family! 
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