#aThomasThanksgiving

We are officially listening to Christmas music! Well, I am… Mitch has been officially listening to Christmas music since Halloween. Weirdo. 🙂

I myself need to fully embrace Thanksgiving before I’m ready to think about the lights, wreaths, gifts, and carols of Christmas… but now that it is December 2nd (!!!), it’s time to start getting into the Christmas spirit. Before we unleash the beast, I owe you a recap of our Thanksgiving celebration! If you follow us on Instagram (@lesliethomas921), you saw a few snapshots of our holiday weekend, but now it’s time for the “extended edition”.

We started doing these recaps last year (here’s last year’s Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter ones) and have gotten a lot of positive feedback on them. I think it’s especially nice for friends and family we don’t get to see often to be able to check in on what we’re up to. For those of you who we’ve never met in person, it’s always fun when we get to share moments of our lives that give you a better idea of who we are and where we come from. PLUS, I find myself looking back on those recaps all.the.time. Partly for posterity’s sake, but they have also been really helpful in answering the “whose house were we at for this day last year?” and “what was the name of that place we went ice skating?” questions. All that to say, the trend continues… so let’s get to it!

Our Thanksgiving adventure started on Wednesday evening as we loaded up the car with our stuff and began the trek to Mitch’s dad’s house in Delaware. If possible, we like to start driving a little later in the evening- say 6 or so- because by that time rush hour traffic is pretty much cleared up and we can really cruise without much delay. After exchanging hugs and hellos, we changed into comfy clothes and settled in for snacking, catching up, and relaxing by the fireplace. The next morning (Thanksgiving!), I woke Mitch up promptly at 8:00am to watch the parade before realizing that I had the time wrong and it actually started at 9:00am! He was not a happy camper… sorry Mitch!

We spent the morning in PJs, flipping back and forth between the Philly and Macy’s parades, and sipping down hot chocolate (with marshmallows, of course!)… such a relaxing way to start the holiday weekend. That afternoon, Mitch and I took a walk around the neighborhood just to get out and about. It was a beautiful, warm day… not at all the weather you’d expect for late fall! Family and friends trickled in throughout the day and final preparations were made to the meal.

I love that shot because it perfectly captures that moment in time; the anticipation of finally sitting down to share a meal together… something that probably doesn’t happen nearly enough in our busy world anymore. We all shared something we were thankful for and then our nephew, Ayden, said grace before the feasting began!

After dinner, Mitch’s dad, Ayden, Mitch and I took another walk around the neighborhood. It was so peaceful and quiet… all the lights in the houses were lit and you could hear festivities happening as we walked past each one. One family even had a bonfire going out back! After some dessert, we said our goodbyes and hopped in the car for the three minute drive over to his mom’s house. Everyone was pretty tired after a long day of celebrating, but we spent some time relaxing and catching up before heading to bed.

Another sunny and warm morning came and before we knew it, Black Friday was upon us. Mitch and I usually don’t go out for the big shopping experience, but this year we decided to brave a few stores. There were a few specific deals we wanted to take advantage of, so we went in with our check lists and stop watches ready to go… the goal being to get in and out as quickly as possible and back home to a hot breakfast.

In the end, it wasn’t as scary as we were anticipating and we actually scored some good deals! Plus, we managed to do everything in an hour and a half, getting us back to Mitch’s mom’s house for French Toast Casserole! Which, by the way, might be one of my new favorites… I’m a huge French Toast fan and I swear they’ll be serving this in heaven some day. It was that good. 🙂

We spent the morning lounging around before getting our sneakers on and heading to the local athletic club to spend some time out of the house. We played a little basketball and then Mitch’s mom and I hit the weight room to get our muscle building on. 🙂 Back at home later, we enjoyed a soup dinner with apple pie for dessert and finished the night off with some card games!

Saturday morning found us packing our bags for our third and final leg of our journey… off to my parents house! As they live right over the border in Pennsylvania, our drive was only about 25 minutes. We spent some time catching up over a light lunch and then all of us hopped in the car to meet some of our extended family for a walk at a local trail. It was misty and dreary, but we logged some serious steps!

I remember doing this growing up… all of us kids would be on roller blades or bikes and it would be one long parade of a family out on a walk together. It’s been a long time since we did that, so hopefully we can start the tradition back up again. This year, only about half of us were able to come, but it would be so neat to have the whole clan out. Maybe next year! As it turns out, family walks can give you quite the appetite, so we all met back at my parents house (and some more of the family joined us there) for dinner. We all got together like this last year and I loved it because those of us who missed seeing everyone on Thanksgiving day get another chance!

The next morning, we went to church with my parents, which was really fun because I got to see a lot of the people who watched me grow up. Because I work in a church and Sunday is a work day, it is very rare that I am able to worship anywhere else, so this was a treat!

After church, we ate lunch and then went to our favorite Christmas tree farm to get my parent’s tree. How fun it was to break out the decorations back at their house and trim the tree… Christmas music playing in the background, of course! We ended the night with a pizza dinner before packing all of our paraphernalia back into the car and heading home. And with that, Thanksgiving 2015 is officially in the books!

Now tell us… are you still holding onto the last shred of the fall season or have you transitioned into full-steam-ahead CHRISTMAS?