Thanksgiving 2015

We had a great Thanksgiving break this year.  It was Kevin's Fall Break so we had the entire week off together.  We headed up to visit some friends in Chicago the first weekend and then headed to Southern Indiana to stay with our families for the rest of the week.  I'll do a Chicago recap next week filled with delicious restaurants, fun activities and tips for traveling with toddlers.  

Here are the best parts of our Thanksgiving break:

This was the first year of our married life where we were able to be in town a few days early and were actually able to contribute to the Thanksgiving meal.  We've either not traveled for Thanksgiving or come in like a whirlwind so this year was a treat!  I offered to make the pies and place cards for our family gathering with my side - two of my favorite tasks.  My mom happily agreed.  I made pumpkin & pecan and quickly remembered that baking with a baby bump is messy :)

Olive painted tons of pages of white card stock for me days in advance so I brought them along to make place cards out of.  I traced her hand to make a template and then cut out hand print turkeys for each person.  They turned out so cute and were really easy to assemble.

 My mom and I did some late night Christmas shopping a time or two before Thanksgiving.  Neither of us were interested in fighting Black Friday crowds so we just used coupons and shopped great deals in advance.  It worked out great and Olive was a good shopping buddy.

 Olive was up bright and early on Thanksgiving so we watched the parade and ate some Pumpkin Streusel Muffins I made the night before.  She thought the singing was boring, but got excited about the characters and balloons.  I don't remember the parade being so theatrical in the past??  The muffins were delicious and I promise to share the recipe with you next week :)

We ate a delicious lunch at Kevin's grandparent's house.  Everything was so tasty that I might have eaten seconds - for the baby of course :)  I tried to convince Olive to eat some turkey, but she just shouted "I no like CHICKEN!" and proceeded to eat her weight in green Olives, green beans & rolls. The weather was amazing - 65 and sunny so we spent a lot of time outside.

 My mom spent the day in the kitchen to make us a delicious dinner.

It was all so great and then we stuffed ourselves with dessert.

 We enjoyed the rest of our visit seeing friends, playing with fun toys at the grandparent's houses and enjoying the break.  Kevin's wrapping up his first semester as a professor so he was thrilled to have some down time.

 Olive helped my MIL decorate her tree.  She only broke one ornament so I'd consider that a success.  She kept going up to the tree to show us where she'd put her decorations.  It makes me really excited to put up our tree with her this year.

We always find my in-laws cats entertaining.  It's their first Christmas so they were mesmerized by the trees.  Let's just hope they don't start climbing them :)

 We ate at our favorite local spots, watched lots of football and had a great visit.

We'll be back for Christmas in just a few weeks :)

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving to kick off the holiday season!