Another Thanksgiving in the books. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday! Ours was such a great time, I mostly enjoyed spending downtime with the family. It’s definitely one of my favorite holidays and I’m pretty sure the kid’s, too. I mean what’s better than a week off and lots of food! They were very upset after Halloween that things went straight to Christmas and “skipped Thanksgiving.” I think this is another showcase of our children being sponges for things they hear around them!
I love hosting my family and I love that things shut down everywhere and we’re forced to hang around, be lazy for once and have no regrets about it.
Thursday
My brother and his girlfriend came up early Thursday morning and we immediately prepped our cheese and charcuterie board that we like to nibble on while the turkey is cooking.
Then my parents arrived soon after and we all ate and hung around watching football of course. The topic of trivia came up, and I just so happened to own a Pub Trivia game that I brought out and we all played a few rounds, which was super fun. For the most part. There was a lot of “No one knows the answer to that!” going on. Ha!
Before we sat down and were too full for family photos, we had to capture our annual shot.
Get ready…
Say cheese!
Dinner was amazing as usual, and we had to get our annual shot of Brett carving the turkey.
I did make some spectacular green beans and almonds, too. 🙂 Yumm!
After dinner and clean up, we always make an Irish coffee to sip on. And I got the family in on a little game of LCR. Which for some reason Reece always seems to win!
Friday
The next day, my brother and Brett had to work, so the girls all hit the streets and braved the crowds for a little shopping. It really wasn’t too bad, although we couldn’t find parking at the mall and decided to just head home after perusing through Nordstrom Rack. Rylee was loving the experience of it all, too! We hardly ever go to the mall, so when we decided to go this time, it was like a whole new experience for her. She loved trying on outfits and looking for good deals. It was so adorable and I could see the little pre-teen in her brewing!
When we got home, we all watched a little bit of the World Cup Games and enjoyed some leftovers. Shopping is tiring!
Saturday
Saturday we had plans to go to the circus! It’s called the Vernardos Circus and they set up a tent right in Hamlin.
I have to say, we didn’t know what we were getting into when we walked up to the tent. But the show was really, really good. The story behind it and the performers were all amazing. Just seeing the kids faces during the show made it all worth it.
On our way home we wanted to try a new restaurant with a Peruvian Italian menu. It was really good!
We got home just in time to watch the riveting UCF football game, which thankfully ended in a win! Go Knights!
We had such a great time, but it’s always hard to say goodbye. I always look back so fondly on these long weekends with the family, and so many memories made. It’s just sad that we don’t live closer to my brother and his girlfriend so we can go shopping all the time!
So much fun!