Thanksgiving was always a pretty big deal in my house.
Every three years, all of my mom's side of the family would drive/fly in from Utah and Arizona for a weekend of crazy, loud, crowded, late-night, game-filled fun!
When I was younger, everyone would stay at my parents house and it was just insane! Aunts, uncles, and cousins everywhere and never enough bathrooms!
The garage would be turned into another bedroom (California weather makes that pretty easy - not too hot or cold!) and all the boys would eat, sleep, and fart (sorry to be crass, but these were boys after all!) into the wee hours of the morning playing video games and RISK and generally making trouble while us girls bunked in the living room.
We made so many fun memories from those Thanksgivings and now with families of our own, it is harder and harder to make the Thanksgivings happen!
Well, last year was THE year, but I pretty much messed that up...or I should say Reagan did!
I got myself knocked up and like a spoiled daughter demanded that my mother be in attendance to her birth and therefore Thanksgiving was postponed to this year!
What a week!
I took the kids home early so Kevin could work a few more days and they did awesome!
We had a row to ourselves and both of them passed out!
That night, we got together with my brother Kevin and his wife Jessica for dinner in Brea and the kids loved looking at the Christmas decorations!
The day before Thanksgiving, we had planned on doing Disneyland with a bunch of my cousins but finally realized that it would probably be a miserable day.
Colin hates loud sounds and crowds, and while he's been to Disneyland before, we hadn't tried it with Reagan too.
So we scratched that and thought we would go see Frozen...on opening day...
Well, we got there and all of the showings were sold out so we came up with Plan C - Chuck E Cheeses!
Colin and Cody loved it and we didn't spend $200 (plus food!)
Thanksgiving Day
That morning we took the kids over to the park to get out of the house for a bit and while I watched the kiddos, the cousins played football!
Just like old times, we set up the garage with video games and toys for the young kids - they all had such a fun time
We played and tried to stay out of Nana's way while she cooked up a storm for 50 people!
It was another fantastic meal with all of my favorites! My brother Steven even smoked the turkeys, which was AMAZING!
I am so thankful for these people:
My wise, protective, and loving oldest brother Steve
My funny and creative older brother Mark
My hard working and fun little brother Kevin
My sweet and loyal little sister Stacie
My wonderful, understanding, devoted, amazing, ambitious, loving, brilliant, funny husband Kevin
My amazingly-talented-in everything mother Jeanette
and my hard working and generous father Perry
You all mean everything to me and I love each of you!
I am so grateful to have each of you!
Well, as always, the meal took its toll on some of us...but not all!
Now, growing up we would always go to the beach on Black Friday, but it rained on us and we stayed home...which means I got to see a lot of this:
Yep...rattlesnake!
Thursday = traditional thanksgiving
Friday = wild thanksgiving!
Since all of my uncles hunt, they bring some of the goodies they've "collected" throughout the year to share and we had quite the feast!
But the wildness didn't stop there...we went to the church to play a little Nerf Wars!
My brother and his friends get together and play fun games with Nerf guns and were happy to let us join in for some zombies vs humans and capture the flag!
We had such a blast running around in the dark, shooting nerf darts, acting like idiots, and looking super cool with our guns and gear! Seriously, so much fun!
All good things must come to an end though, and so we took our traditional picture with everyone and said goodbye!
But we couldn't let the opportunity pass to take some updated family photos!!
Happy Thanksgiving!!
