Early Thanksgiving and Real Thanksgiving

My parents called us the first week of November and said they were ready to come see us again.  It was a bit of a surprise since we had just seen them the month before- but we said we would take them anyway.  They were in the process of getting their house ready to sell and they needed a break from all that hard work.  We decided to have early Thanksgiving while they were here since we were pretty sure we wouldn't see them for the real day.  I had seen some cute ideas on pinterest for some Thanksgiving day activities.  We tried out turkey bowling which involved turning regular bowling pins into turkey with mass amounts of feathers.  We also tried a version of turkey shoot where we shot nerf dart guns at helium balloons with turkeys drawn on them for different point values.  Both games were super fun and the kids were begging me to do them again on real Thanksgiving. We started our meal off with festive poppers.  Once everyone was brave enough to pop theirs open- they were thrilled with their fun prizes and crowns.  We had great food, even better dessert, and finished up the evening watching Home Alone which has always been my favorite and now the kids love it to.  (Minus Brinlee who will have bad dreams if we even mention the bad guys Harry and Marv.)  Cole does a pretty spot on impression of the mom on the movie yelling, "Kevin!"   We were sad to see Nana and Grandpa go, but happy that we got to have Thanksgiving with them- even if it was a few weeks early.  

Fast forward a few weeks and we are to real Thanksgiving.  We had a fun time going to see Free Birds at the movie theater as a family a couple of days before Thanksgiving.  We also found a sweet deal on a new tv and gave that to our fam as an early Christmas gift.  The kids still can't get over how big it is.(It is not really that big- our old tv was just really really small.) We had yummy dinner which the girls helped me to prepare, lots of football watching, and the traditional reading of the thankfuls out of the turkey box while we had dessert.  We did a little black Friday shopping the next day, but not til around 10:00.  I then snuck out to see the new Hunger Games movie which was great!  The kids were bummed about going back to school, but then they realized that it would only be a few more weeks and they would be out again for Christmas break! I love Thanksgiving and the opportunity it gives up to remember and express gratitude for all that we have been blessed with.  I think it is so fitting that it is the holiday right before Christmas.