Thanksgiving

Tomorrow I head off to my homestate of Ohio for the beginning of a Thanksgiving celebration. My sister and her fiancee are driving back to Cleveland so the boyfriend and I are hitching a ride with them. This is the 1st time the boyfriend is coming home for an actual holiday, which I am very excited about. We will be in the car for most of Wednesday, since it takes about 6 1/2 hours to get there but there is usually a lot of traffic around the holidays.

My aunt is hosting Thanksgiving this year at her house which I am excited about. She makes really good food and lots of it! I think this year we will have 20 adults and 1 kid. My Grandparents are coming, my whole family, my Mom's sister's family and most of my Mom's brother's family. My sister is bringing her fiancee, I'm bringing my boyfriend, and last I heard my little sister is also bringing her boyfriend as well.

Friday early afternoon is a wedding shower for my sister that my Aunts are throwing her. I'm very excited and hope she likes my gift! Saturday morning the boyfriend and I have an early morning flight to St. Louis, where we will then spend the weekend with his family and celebrate Thanksgiving part 2. I have never been to his house for Thanksgiving, in fact, I have only ever been to Thanksgiving hosted by my mom or her sister, so this will be a big change for me. I just hope I'm not Turkey-ed out for part 2. We will spend Saturday, Sunday and Monday in St. Louis.

Once I get back, it'll be less than 3 weeks until Christmas. I better get shopping!

Jumping For Joy

If you know me and the boyfriend then you know that we LOVE to take jumping pictures! I'm too sure why it all started, but now it's become our "thing" and we do it everywhere we go. While hard at work at home, definitely not at work, I put together this nice little collage of the boyfriend and I jumping all over the US. Hope you and enjoy, and next time you are in front of a tourist attraction, just jump!

Christmas Plans Shake-Up

I leave for Chicago on Thursday December 23rd to celebrate Christmas with the family. This year there will be different, mainly because there have been snafus along the way so far:

- Not a snafu, in fact quite the opposite, but I found out last night my roommate Emily and I are randomly on the same flight out there!
- My sister and my mom are on their way back from India today, where they went for my sister's friends' wedding. They are stuck in Frankfurt, Germany for the next 3 days due to weather, so they won't be arriving home until Christmas Eve
- Another sister isn't coming home at all for Christmas. She has to work (didn't really understand the whole story on why she couldn't come), but will be spending Christmas with her boyfriend's family in Pennsylvania. She also didn't make it home for Thanksgiving due to her friends wedding.

This is the 1st year ever that we will all not be together for Christmas. It will be the start, I think, of us not all being together for the Holidays, something I am not yet prepared for.

Thanksgiving Recap

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun! I was in Cleveland visiting the family, my sisters came into town from Chicago, my cousins came from Seattle and Phoenix. We did a lot of eating, drinking, sitting around, playing on our iPhones, and relaxing.

My sister and I with our cousin's babies. Am I a natural or what.

Babies playing ball with each other

Isn't she adorable!

Great Lakes Beer

I can't believe I almost forgot to mention that I saw Harry Potter with my cousins! It was amazing, left off right at the moment where I am hooked and can't wait to see the last one. Anyone know when it's coming out?

Favorite Thanksgiving Memory

Today at our Thanksgiving Potluck, we had to tell a story of our favorite Thanksgiving memory, so I thought I would share it with you all:

About 5 years ago, we had Thanksgiving at our house. My mom had the idea to make the tablecloth be out of paper, so everyone could draw on it. It was a creative idea, so we went with it. My Grandma had one too many martinis (she usually has 2 a day, so that's saying a lot) and she was drawing Christmas trees and singing Christmas carols down on her end of the table. We had to keep reminding her that it was Thanksgiving and that she had the holiday wrong.

Can't wait for the shenanigans this year. Can you believe Thanksgivings is ONE WEEK AWAY!

Holiday Traditions

Today I was reading another blog where they were discussing holiday traditions, so I thought I would share mine.

Halloween - Ever since college my mom sends me and my sisters a plastic orange pumpkin full of Halloween candy and goodies. We have to save the pumpkin each year and return it.

Thanksgiving - Nothing too special here, either my mom or my aunt would cook Thanksgiving dinner with the usual - turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing (some made inside, some not, otherwise there wouldn't be enough), sweet potato souffle, corn bread pudding, canned cranberries (my favorite), and of course pumpkin pie for dessert. This is making me hungry.

Christmas - If we have it our house, we always have lasagna (my dad's family is Italian), garlic bread and salad. If we have it at our aunt's, she usually does Honey Baked Ham with potato casserole. For presents we always open presents to each other on Christmas Eve night, and then Santa presents on Christmas morning. We open our Santa presents one at a time, in order based on where we're sitting around the tree. When we were little my mom would give us each the same amount of gifts so it would be fair, and they usually took a picture of us coming down the stairs on Christmas morning.

Easter - My mom would hide our baskets in the house and we would go find them. The baskets are quite large and so there were only a few options as to where they could be. We would always get the same 2 toys in our basket - an egg that was cracked at the top and when you open it the chicklet would squeak, and a thing where you had to push the piece in with your thumb to spin open the cracked egg to view the chicklet inside. When we were younger, there was much more candy in the basket, and as we got older there were more gifts than candy.

Birthdays - My mom would cook us our favorite meal (with dessert).

What about you, what are you favorite holiday traditions that you do with your family?