V is just winding down from her first Thanksgiving weekend. Dan and I have had the same tradition for years now and V experienced it all with smiles and giggles.
Our Thanksgiving tradition...
We start out the morning by sleeping in a little bit. I like to put on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade while we are getting ready for the day. Once we are presentable, we head over to Granny Holloway's for some awesome food and visiting with my mom's six siblings and their families. Around two or three in the afternoon we say our goodbyes and head over to my aunt Carolyn's to visit with my dad's six siblings and their families. Of course, we have round two of Thanksgiving dinner (the food is great there too). Then around 7 P.M. we leave to go visit Dan's family and have desert. We usually get home around 10 P.M. with very full bellies and sleepy eyes. This year was exactly the same, which is amazing since we had a two month old baby with us. V was great. She was had big smiles and giggles for all three family gatherings. We hope she will love Thanksgiving as much as we do because she gets to see so many of her grandparents, great grandparents, great aunts, great uncles, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins. However, she will come to realize the only down side to have a huge family that all live so close is that you have to visit them all and never get to fully enjoy an entire day with any of the families.
Our day-after-Thanksgiving-all-day-shopping tradition...
We were not sure if we were going to continue this tradition or not since V is so young and the weather was going to be so cold. However, we decided to take her out and if things didn't go so well we could always go home. Normally we would have started our shopping around 6 A.M., but since we had the little one with us we decided to wait until the big rush was over with. So instead we started around 10 A.M., bundled V up in her awesome "Bundle Me by J. J. Cole", and headed for the mall first, followed by Target, Meijers, Target (Hamburg), and Kohl's. We shopped for about 8 hours and V was wonderful the entire time. She never cried or fussed at all during the day. I think we have a little shopper on our hands!
Our Saturday-after-Thanksgiving tradition...
Our tradition for this day includes pulling out all our Christmas decorations and decorating the house for the holidays. This took a little longer than normal because our decorating was interrupted by feedings and diaper changes. However, the decorations are all up and the house looks great.
At the moment, we are all three enjoying some much needed relaxation. I have a slight cold and I am trying to make sure that V does not catch it--I would hate to get her sick! Tomorrow my mom starts watching V here at our house along with my little one-year old cousin, so I need to get back to baby-proofing our house.