Thanksgiving - Two Weeks Later

One thing I’ve noticed after 20 years of blogging (yes, it’s been 20 years! Isn’t that crazy?) is that I can’t remember our holiday celebrations from year to year if I don’t post about them. My blog is essentially my journal and family record, and I go back in my archives all the time to solve little mysteries. I’ve been trying to write a post about Thanksgiving for a while now and time keeps getting away from me. 

I tried really hard to make our Thanksgiving break a good experience for the girls. I made lots of plans so we would stay busy and (hopefully) have less drama and fighting.

We started off our break (on Tuesday) with dinner at Red Robin followed by lights at Luminaria. 

We brought Daisy’s friend, Sami, with us because we still like to take four kids everywhere we go, and Sami loves Christmas. 

On Wednesday I went to work for a few hours and then I took the girls to see Zootopia 2. I slept (and apparently snored) through the whole movie. Then we went to Penny Ann’s Cafe for lunch. 

We also went to Hobby Lobby and bought supplies to make nutcrackers. I bought the actual nutcrackers back in October, and I’m glad I did because they didn’t have anymore by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. We got everything we needed to fulfill our nutcracker making dreams, then came home and got to work. 

Zoe and Eva had short attention spans and didn’t spend long on their nutcrackers, but Daisy and I spent hours on ours, and we had a blast! We laughed at all the details and the things we had to look for in Google images for inspiration. 

Here are everyone’s nutcrackers. Can you tell who they are?

Eva’s:

Zoe’s:

Daisy’s:

Mine (I made two):

On Thursday, we had a nice, calm morning. We watched the parade and lounged about. Then two hours before our meal, we started making the mashed potatoes (my assignment was the potatoes and the rolls. I took the easy route and bought the rolls this year). We got the potatoes done early, so we threw them in a Crock Pot with some butter to keep them warm.

We had Thanksgiving at my mom’s house. My mom had hidden challenges under our plates for us to try and complete during the meal. Mine was to gobble every time someone said the world “turkey.” Scotty had to give everyone a high five. Daisy had to stand on her chair and tell everyone how much she loved them. Zoe had to stand up and give a toast.

Then, to make further fools of us, my mom made us wear inflatable costumes and play kickball. 

Nicky was able to call us for 30 minutes on Thanksgiving. It was hard to hear him because he was driving and had bad ear buds in, but he was having an adventurous day and was in his way to enjoy his second Thanksgiving meal of the day at 8:00 pm. 

I have no memory of what happened on Friday before 4:00. Scotty didn’t have to work, but I have no idea what we did during the day. I think I might have worked that morning and then come home and fallen asleep on the couch. Then that night we played games with our friends and ate steak. 

On Saturday morning we went to see Wicked. Then I came home and got funeral potatoes in crock pots for my friend’s son’s mission open house that night. 

Scotty drove Zoe and Eva up to his brother’s house for a sleepover. I went to Michael’s (the store) (I have to specify since my friend’s son who just came home from his mission is named Michael) with my friend (not Michael’s mom - I have at least two friends) and then to the DI by myself. Then I went to my friend’s church to deliver the potatoes and help set up the open house for her son, Michael’s, mission return from Texas. 

How’s that for clarity?

Sunday was Michael’s “homecoming” that we don’t call “homecoming” (but still call “homecoming” because being a Mormon comes with a complicated, ever-changing vocabulary, and, by the way, we don’t say “Mormon” anymore, but sometimes I just have to because “member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints” just hurts my brain too much, and it’s nothing against Jesus, I just need to get to the point and ain’t no one still listening by the time I finish the proper verbiage). 

After the “homecoming,” we hung out at home for a while and then went to visit the in-laws. 

And that wraps our Thanksgiving experience of 2025. Now I’m just over a week away from the start of Christmas break, and I’m a little scared because it’s going to be a long one (18 days), and I feel like we’ve already done all the things. There’s nothing celebratory for us to do to burn the time. Yikes!