It's been about a week and a half since Thanksgiving but I still wanted to recap our holiday. This year (as with most), we stayed in St. Louis to celebrate but D's sister and her family decided to come visit us and meet baby Connor and play with Declan. Declan absolutely loves his cousins Quinn and Eli and had a blast with them this summer at the cabin and this visit was no different for him. He couldn't wait to wake up Thanksgiving morning and see them in our house. They all took off to play cars and other toys throughout our house.
Because I'm still trying to manage having two kids, I did not offer to host for Thanksgiving this year but luckily my mom was willing to cook and host at her house, so Thanksgiving afternoon we took the short drive over to her house with our guests and enjoyed Thanksgiving over there. Since we were bringing a full crew with us, I did help her prepare some of the casseroles and the desserts for the big day. The day was nice and everyone seemed to have fun. The kids all played in Declan's room at Nana and Papa's and we made Christmas ornament shrink-i-dinks.
On Friday, we all got ready and headed to Main Street St. Charles for shopping and to visit Santa at Frontier Park. The kids collected the Christmas Traditions trading cards from the characters along Main Street, got to eat cookies from Grandma's cookies and pick out bath bombs and bath scrubs from BathHouse Soapery (I've never known kids to be so excited over bath products!). After shopping we headed to the Trainshed to visit with Santa. I wasn't sure how Declan would do with Santa this year. His first Christmas (2018) he slept through the visit; his second visit (2019) was at preschool and he just sat there unsure of him; last year (2020) due to the pandemic we didn't take him to see Santa, so this year, I was hoping he would be ok with meeting Santa. Declan was so excited to see Santa and tell him what he and Connor wanted. St. Charles took extra precautions and Santa was behind a window talking to the kids but Declan gave Santa his wish list -- a remote control Dodge Ram and "toys" and diapers and burp cloths for Connor. Declan also made sure to introduce Santa to his baby brother. (Anywhere we go, he makes sure that person knows that he has a baby brother named Connor.) Connor, like Declan his first year, slept through the entire encounter. Thank goodness Declan was there to give him Connor's wish list!
After a visit with Santa, we came home and had chicken wings from B. Hall's for dinner to celebrate uncle Kalvin's birthday, which was on Thanksgiving.
Saturday morning started out more of the same way with the kids getting up and starting their day playing. Ash and Kalvin decided to make the trek home on Saturday to give them time to get back befoer heading back to work on Monday. Michigan was also faced with a winter weather advisory and was expecting a good amount of snow, so they ended up heading out around noon.
On Sunday, we promised Declan we would put up our Christmas decorations and Christmas tree. Throughout the day he asked about Quinn and Eli but we were thankful that putting up the Christmas stuff provided a bit of a distraction.
D took off of work on Monday so we decided to tackle a bit of our Christmas shopping as well as making a donation to Goodwill once we boxed up clothes and other household items we really didn't need anymore. It ended up being a really productive day for us. We have our weekends together but it always seems like there isn't enough time to the "extras" we want or need to do. Monday gave us the time to do that and get a good portion of our Christmas shopping done all before picking up Declan from preschool.
Overall it was a good Thanksgiving weekend and we were glad to spend it with family. Up next for us is celebrating D's birthday and then Christmas with both of our families. I'm still anxious about traveling with 2 kids and being out of my element and away from home but I'm hoping for the best.
Our Family Picture from Thanksgiving
