Thanksgiving Weekend 2011

I did an awesome job of photographing our Thanksgiving weekend.... NOT! And it didn't even really dawn on me until just now, as I was looking at pictures and starting this post. And every year I vow to do better about taking pictures of family, etc. at Thanksgiving and it never happens! So here is a little written rundown of our weekend in Oregon.

Wednesday evening: Filled the gas guzzler up, grabbed a couple burgers for the road and headed out of town. Lots of traffic, but it was moving fairly fast. No problem... Until we got just outside of Albany. Total standstill. Ugh. Apparently there was a huge pothole in the road and they were fixing it right then and the freeway was down to just one lane. Yay. Drive took us 3 hours instead of 2.

Thursday: HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! My dad ran in the Turkey Stuffer while the rest of us "slept in". Ethan was up by 7am (a bit early for him) so I was also up nice and early. No worries. We had rented Cars 2 at Redbox and it was an instant hit. So Ethan watched that for a while and then we all watched a bit of the Macy's parade - and I was lucky enough to sneak in a little power nap. We had such a small group at dinner this year. Three groups of three. My mom, dad and Lizzy. Sean, Ethan and I. And my uncle Gale, aunt Sue and cousin Heather. Dinner was delicious. Turkey, funeral potatoes (or Pat's potatoes in my family), broccoli casserole (love!), green salad, mashed potatoes (made by Sean), homemade rolls (made by me, using grandma Sandy's yummy recipe!), carrots and pumpkin pie (made by Sean) for dessert. If I would have thought about it soon enough, I would have loved to have made a jello salad - I've been wanting to try that rainbow one or the stained glass blocks one from Our Best Bites. Oh well, next year. We had more than enough food.

This actually did not happen on Thanksgiving... We're a little more behaved around company!
PS: That's my mom doing the spray can whipped cream decorating on Lizzy's face!

We played our annual post-dinner Bingo game and Ethan was our caller - with a little help from Lizzy. I've got to say, he did pretty good! Just some confusion here and there when he would call out "N 34" when it was really "N 43". There were a couple of false alarm BINGO's. "BINGO! Just kidding..." It sure kept us on our toes, though! And made the game a little more interesting.

Thursday Night: Lizzy and I headed out for Black Friday shopping at about 9:40pm because Toys-R-Us had opened its doors at 9pm. I had a couple things I wanted to get for Ethan so I could get them crossed off my list. I did NOT like the idea of starting Black Friday on Thanksgiving but I was hoping to get Ethan a Leapster 2 for 1/2 off. We got there and had to wait in line, in the rain, for a good 20+ minutes just to get in!! Then the Leapsters were sold out. Grrr... So we waited in a huge line to get a couple other things. Misery! I don't know if I'll do that again. Black Friday, early morning shopping is ok - huge, ridiculously long lines is NOT! We finally got out of there at midnight and then headed to Walmart because my Mom and Lizzy's friend had attempted Target but there was a crazy-long line to get in there too.

Friday EARLY Morning: You can read this post to hear how our trip to Walmart went. In the end, I just got a couple DVDs - nothing exciting. Next we met up with my Mom and Allison (Lizzy's friend) at the mall for "Midnight Madness". Madness was 100% accurate. It was so busy!! And I didn't even have anything I was getting there. I just went because that's where the rest of my group wanted to be. It was quite weird to see the food court in full swing and people eating Panda Express, Arby's, etc. at two o'clock in the morning. Are you people crazy?! Of course, I had a little breakfast sandwich myself at about 3:15am because staying up that late does weird things to my body and makes me hungry at odd hours. Finally we left the mall and went to Target. Heaven! No crowds. No lines. Got EVERYTHING I wanted. Sweet! Then we went to Freddies for the 1/2 price sock sale. Cracks me up that people get up before 5am for that sale! Ha ha!! I got Ethan a couple more Transformer cars to add to his collection because they were on sale and are getting harder and harder to find! Our last stop of the day was Bed, Bath & Beyond for my Mom, Lizzy and Allison and Old Navy for me. Half-price pair of jeans for Sean and I was done. Home by sometime after 7am and crashed until a little after 1pm.

"Mistletoe Not Required"
This shirt on my baby sister scares me...

"An Elf's Four Main Food Groups
Syrup, Candy Canes, Candy Corn, Candy"
Gross!!

Friday Afternoon/Evening: Woke up to the sound of Tory and Sean talking in the living room. Hung out for a while and had a pretty low-key rest of the day including eating yummy left-overs and a couple little cat-naps. :) Sean managed to drag me and Lizzy (see pictures above) to Walmart one more time to get some snacks for Saturday's Duck game and check out a gift for Ethan - which we ended up getting. Shh... It's a surprise!

Saturday: Oregon/Oregon St. Civil War football game!!! My Dad had to work, Lizzy was given a free ticket and my Mom worked concessions with my Aunt (fundraiser for the high school my Aunt works at). This left Sean, Ethan and I with the house to ourselves! Ethan had come down with a cold (cough and runny nose), so it was good that he stayed home to rest. We watched the Ducks win {49 to 21!!}and had another fairly low-key day. In the evening, Sean took Ethan to the 3D showing of the Lion King at the cheap theaters and Lizzy and I saw Cowboys and Aliens. Ethan loved Lion King and told me that he "tried not to cry when Mufasa died". Cowboys and Aliens was interesting... Worth seeing once - especially if you are a Harrison Ford and/or Daniel Craig fan.

Sunday: Went to 5th ward sacrament meeting to listen to Tory give his homecoming talk (very well done!) and then back to my parents' house for lunch, Muppet Christmas Carol movie and naps. Packed up our stuff and headed for home.

A couple of the only Fall leave pictures I have managed to catch this year... And these were actually quite dull and gray, but I'm planning a little Picasa tutorial to show how I brightened them up and made the colors pop a little.

PS: You know I did not take many pictures of an even when I have ZERO pictures of Ethan from the weekend!! Funny, but so sad...