Thanksgiving 2015 Recap

This year’s Thanksgiving was a great success! And by great success I mean that we enjoyed Thanksgiving day with Riley’s family and then did nothing on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. We had planned on going out on the town, but the torrential rain we received kept us inside since the roads were dangerously flooded in many places. At first the weather was a little disappointing, but we ended up having an incredible weekend together.

Today I’m going to recap our Thanksgiving day and long weekend! One of my favorite perks of keeping a blog is documenting holidays and life events. Though I journal often, I’m not a play-by-play journaler. In other words, I don’t write down everything I do each day. I write more about how I’m feeling, what I’m struggling with, what I’m rejoicing about, and what I’m praying for. Inevitably, this will sometimes lead me to write down what I did that day, or what’s going on in life at the moment, but I rarely write about anything in detail.

What I’m trying to say is that I love writing about holidays and life events so that I can look back on them, especially since blogging allows me to attach photos to memories as well.

On Thanksgiving morning, we woke up early, around 7am. I set the coffee to brew the night before, so we got to wake up to the sweet smell of coffee floating through our home. We quickly got dressed in comfortable clothes, I threw my hair up in a ponytail, and we both put on our running shoes. We then poured some hot, delicious coffee into travel mugs, hooked Charley onto his leash, and headed out on a long morning walk. Our neighborhood was completely quiet and still; in fact, we did not see one other person on our entire walk. It was so peaceful and lovely.

Once we were back home, we took showers and turned on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. We continued to sip our coffee, I made a bagel to eat (my favorite breakfast ever!), and we sat in the warm morning glow of our Christmas tree, enjoying Thanksgiving, just us.

Around 9am, I packed up the casseroles that I had made the day before (green bean and hash brown), we both put on our coats and shoes, crated Charley, and headed out to the lake for a day with family. The lake house (Riley’s grandparent’s house) is about 40 minutes away, and we enjoyed listening to Christmas music all the way there! The leaves here in Texas have just started to change in the past two weeks, and it is so beautiful! Below is a photo from our drive to the lake in the morning.

We were the first to arrive (aside from the family who had stayed the night there), which made for a slow, relaxing morning, just watching the parade with Riley’s grandfather. Other family members began to trickle in along with lots of children! There were six little ones at Thanksgiving, including two tiny babies. So, yeah, all the heart eyes.

As soon as the first little guy arrived, I snatched him up for some snuggles. He ended up falling asleep on my chest for over an hour. It was so perfect…I love babies! By the time he woke up, everyone had arrived, so Riley and I walked around and hugged all of his family, many of whom I hadn’t seen since our wedding in July!

The day continued with more baby snuggles, mostly with my precious little niece. She’s not even two months old, and she is just a bundle of sweet love. Oh, how I love that baby. (She’s on the left below!)

In the early afternoon, we sat down to eat. There were 25 of us total, and everyone pitched in with different dishes. Everything was absolutely delicious! Riley and I loved trying some new Thanksgiving recipes (since we had our own just-us Thanksgiving the previous Thursday–recipes here). We only got one [really weird] photo of us on Thanksgiving, and here it is below!

After dinner was cleaned up, Riley and I resumed our spots on the couch, holding babies and watching football. This continued on, with channel changes to cheesy Christmas movies and a dessert break, for several more hours. Around 9:30 or 10pm, with the rain relentlessly pouring, we decided to start on our drive home.

What a scary drive that was! There were inches of sitting water on most of the roads, with huge pockets even on the interstate. Where the speed limit is usually 75mph, we were lucky to be able to hit 40. Let’s just say, I was extremely thankful to make it home safely. (A huge reason why we stayed safely at home for the rest of the weekend was this drive. #terrifying)

On Friday, we lounged in comfortable clothes, watched movies, and played games all day. It was around 30 degrees, so aside from taking Charley out briefly, we stayed cuddled up inside.

We did the exact same thing on Saturday, until that night, when we FaceTimed with my family in Maryland. Charley and Macy (my aunt’s puppy) finally got to meet…cuteness overload! (Photo below!)

On Sunday, we were a little more active. We still couldn’t drive far because of the continual rain and flooding, so we watched our church service from home. Then, we went to our apartment gym for a while, just to get out of the house and move our sluggish bodies! Full disclosure: this was the first time I’ve worked out since before our wedding, which was on July 31st, so it was high time to get my booty moving again. Post-showers, we headed up to Riley’s mom’s house to spend time with her and Riley’s sister for the evening–we ate dinner together, watched more bad Christmas movies and some football, and as always, laughed a lot. Love them so.

…And that was my Thanksgiving day and long weekend! It was far more relaxed than I had initially intended for it to be, but in the end, it was exactly what I needed. I was able to spend some quality time with God, journaling and reading my Bible, which was like a breath of fresh air and life into my soul. All that crazy rain and countless hours of doing nothing resting were completely worth reconnecting with my Jesus!

// I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving as well! What did your turkey day and long weekend look like?