Thanksgiving Break

Happy December!  How was your Thanksgiving?

Thanksgiving break went by way too fast here!  We saw lots of family, decorated for Christmas, had a little sickness and got our first snow of the season.  I can't believe it's already December and we're wrapping up the year.

We made all the cute turkey/thankful/thanksgiving crafts and activities.  The kids loved it all and we had a blast straying from our usual school schedule on the two day week. We made turkey puppets.  The kids were so cute walking out to their parents at pick up with their turkey puppets.

We made pumpkin pie.  And we were all excited for Thanksgiving break!

On Thanksgiving morning we had our tradition of turkey cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

Find Mom.  Sit on Mom returned!  We don't have many slow mornings during the school week so it was sweet to get extra snuggles with Leo each morning.

I was in charge of bringing pies and cookies to our Thanksgiving gatherings.  Yum!  We saw Kevin's family for Thanksgiving lunch.

Then headed to my parent's house for Thanksgiving dinner.

Cute cousin crew.

Poor Fletch didn't feel well on Thanksgiving so we cut out early.

Cute turkeys!  Leo is very into funny poses for all group pictures these days.  The weather turned freezing so it was nice to have a chilly Thanksgiving.

We're in full Christmas mode now and the calendar is filling up quickly for December.

Thanksgiving Highlights

We had a really great Thanksgiving break!  And I hope you did, too.

We saw a lot of family on Thanksgiving and then did a lot of hanging out at home the rest of the week.  We slept in, snuggled, watched movies, crafted, organized, played and decorated for Christmas.  It was the perfect kick off to the Christmas season.  We just need to get a real tree for our family room.

The best parts of our Thanksgiving were.

Perfect weather on Thanksgiving!

Delivering cookies by bike.

Pop ins from friends!  My friend Allison was in town for the day and she got to see my house for the first time.  We had a great visit!

Penny loved our snuggles and movies nights!

Olive requested pumpkin pie for breakfast on Thanksgiving and was thrilled when I said yes!  She said it'll be her new Thanksgiving tradition.  I made 3 pies and lots of cookies.

We had lunch with Kevin's family and the meal was so good.  I love chicken and dumplings!

Nana hosted and that's always my favorite.  She's Kevin's grandma.  She's in her 80s and hosts often.  She always looks so cute, cooks a ton and is happy to host.  I always tell her that she's amazing!

The kids got to play outside a bunch.

Stop #2 on our Thanksgiving day.

Stop #3.  We had dinner at my sister's house and this Stanley line up for the girls made me smile.

The cousin table!   Leo joined the big kids this year and ate his weight in bread.

My sister in law, sister and myself all dressed alike.  You would have thought we planned it.  Great minds think alike!

We all took turns holding my sister's kitten, Judy.  She made all my cat lady dreams come true when she snuggled on me.

Girl cousins!  The boys screamed and ran when they suggested a boy picture :)

I love cats.  Think they'd notice if I snuck her home with me!?

And that was a Happy Thanksgiving!

A Pretty Perfect Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you did, too!

We had a low key morning at home watching the Thanksgiving parade and getting ready for the day.  Then we headed 20 minutes away to lunch with Kevin's family.  His 84 year old grandma still loves hosting at the holidays!  I tell her often that she is amazing.  We ended the evening by hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house for my family.  It went so well!

After a wild and crazy last year, it felt so good to be home for the holidays.  We loved having everyone over to our house.  Kevin was super helpful getting everything set up and ready.  We worked on things all week so that Thanksgiving Day wasn't too crazy.  We got to debut our fire pit, the cousins had tons of fun playing, we enjoyed family time and dinner was delicious!  It made me so happy to see the kids comfortable and having fun at our house.

Lunch time!

I love making pies.  My crusts turned out so pretty this year.  I think it was because I made them a few days in advance and they had days to chill in the fridge.

I made chocolate covered pretzels, Monster Cookies for lunch and Hershey Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies for dinner time.

I loved how all of my decor came together.  It was fun to find the perfect spots for everything.  My sister had the idea to use disposable plates, we drank out of disposable cups and used real silverware.  I had very few dishes to do at the end of the night!  I'll remember that for next year.

Olive decided our mantel needed to look a little more festive so she made me this darling banner.  She wrote out all the letters and then recruited Fletcher to help her decorate each letter.  I was putting Leo to bed and came out to find it.  I love it so much!

We took out any extra furniture - bar stools & ottomans and brought it tables and chairs to make the kids table.  I also removed anything that wasn't essential from the counters.  It worked out perfectly.

We set up the island as our drink station.  Adult drinks on one end, appetizers and then regular drinks on the other end.  It worked out great!

The dessert table was packed full of goodness!

Dinner is served!  Everything turned out delicious.  My mom and sister helped with bringing sides.  Olive commented that the nice thing about hosting is that you are left with all of the leftovers!  YES!

I'm drooling!  The food was SO GOOD!  I was proud of this pretty plate :)

My sister snapped some sweet pictures of everyone.  The kid table!

Mom & Dad

Tyler & Tabitha

Haley & Kevin

and us!

The forecast did not look favorable for a night around the fire pit.  But it ended up only sprinkling a little bit and it was the perfect night!  Leo kept asking us to go out to "the pit".

Love this Cousin Crew!

 

Thanksgiving 2022 was a good one!

Friendsgiving Donut Turkeys

We hosted a sweet Friendsgiving at our house this week.  The kids were so excited and I had an easy turkey treat for everyone to make.  I wanted to gather our friends and instead of waiting for an invitation, I was the one who initiated the invitation.  Let this be an encouragement to you to get the ball rolling on gathering your people.  Everyone was excited.  You don't have to host a huge meal.  Just come up with a festive treat or festive activity to do together.

Is this not the cutest donut turkey!?

I grabbed a dozen glazed donuts, a dozen chocolate donut holes and then had candy corn, candy pumpkins, edible eyes, pretzel sticks and M&Ms for turkey toppings.  We just poked the toppings into the donut, but you could use something like Nutella to help glue everything together.

They turned out so cute!

Look at this yummy assortment!  I made chocolate covered pretzels to send home with each family and then put all the turkey toppings in little ramekins. 

Each kid had a coloring place mat.  I didn't put names on them - everyone got to pick their own seat and color.

Olive's turkey masterpiece.

Fletcher's turkey masterpiece.  He was very into the Nutella glue.  And Leo had no interest in making a donut turkey.  But he ate his weight in candy corn :)

And if someone has to cancel last minute, it's easy to pack a treat to go box to drop off to them.

I 10/10 recommend making a cute invitation through something like Picmonkey and then texting it out.  It's easy and makes your gathering seem a little more official.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving with the people you love most!  I'm taking the rest of the week off - wish me luck hosting Thanksgiving dinner.  I'll be back here on Monday with a full recap.