Thanksgiving/Christmas Mash Up

I know that this post is almost a month too late, but I still wanted to get some of our pictures up from Thanksgiving. Things here have been going at a slow pace, but my seriously tired out computer needs to be replaced...so little blogging gets to happen.

Anyway, we had a great Thanksgiving. We just spent a quiet day at home. First thing in the morning, we all woke up and wanted something quick to eat. I wasn't wanting to make anything too big for breakfast, so I had grabbed a box of donuts the night before. I think Mia decided on a chocolate, Ten had the kind with the cinnamon and powdered sugar, and I had a frosted doughnut. Yummm....Very high calorie, but hey...these are the holidays after all. 

Thanksgiving Breakfast: This is the first time we have eaten donuts all year...so it was a nice little morning treat.

Ten and Mia decided that they would head to the park for a little while after breakfast so that I could work on dinner/lunch in peace. They actually ended up going to the playroom in our building because it was just way too cold outside. As soon as they came inside, they were both wanting to eat. I kind of expected this, so I had laid out a nice little snack platter. Most of this was prepared the night before, so all I had to do was unwrap it and put it on the table. Nice and easy.

Thanksgiving snacks to hold everyone over until lunchtime. We had lots of veggies, pickles, olives, cheese, crackers, homemade dill dip, pumpernickel bread, feta hummus, and crackers. Of course all of the leftovers were thrown into salads and things throughout the week, so though it look like a lot...nothing went to waste.

For the rest of the morning, we sat around and played with toys while the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade played in the background. I was seriously having the best day. It has been like 6 years since I was able to watch the parade, so I was super excited to see all of the floats and performers. Mia was pretty happy to see the Sesame Street float, and it was Ten's first time really watching the parade. 

Later in the afternoon, maybe around 2:00, we decided to have Thanksgiving dinner. Mia had just woken up from her nap, and we don't like to eat that much food....quantity wise...at night...so we decided it was time. Here is a pic of the food....btw...Mia was done eating after about 15 minutes....so hours of cooking....for 15 minutes...hahaha. It was good though.

Our dinner. Let's see we had oven toasted Hawaiian rolls, cranberry sauce, homemade green bean casserole, homemade sweet potatoes, the turkey of course, homemade mashed potatoes, corn, homemade stuffing, turkey gravy, and homemade pumpkin pie. The pie turned out really good this year, and Mia helped make it...which was a lot of fun...and definitely a lot more work. 

My plate....Ten really loaded it up...haha. Needless to say I was beyond done after this.

Needless to say, we had lots of leftovers. No problem though because we had lots of sandwiches, a turkey quiche one day, potato pancakes for breakfast, stuffed mushrooms, and more. We basically used every last bit of the food. We did have to throw out a little bit of turkey, but we sure did try to use up as much as we could.

That night, Ten and I stayed up for hours and got out all of the Christmas decorations. We first cleaned the apartment really well and then put together the tree, tested the lights, put on the decorations, set up our Christmas train, and got the Advent calendar ready to go....seriously it took us like 4 hours to do everything. We wanted it to look special for Mia when she woke up though, so it was all worth it.

Our Christmas tree with the Advent books underneath.

A close up of the basket and books.

Also, in case you are curious, here are the books that we chose to use for the Advent Calendar. We tried to get a good mix of fun, Christmas spirit, books that Mia will grow into, and things that she is interested in right now. So, far it has been a big success. She calls these her Ho Ho books and looks forward to opening one each morning.

Sorry that it didn't rotate properly...I don't know why that happens sometimes.

...and again. Dream Snow by Eric Carle has turned out to be our favorite book so far. It is such a cute and simple story.

Here are also a few glimpses of things that we put up in our apartment. It is hard to decorate when you use every inch of living space that you have, but we did our best that is for sure.

Santa, Yankee Candle that smells like a Christmas tree, and some pine cones and cinnamon sticks.

Santa #2 with our little nativity scene....and our bread in the background.

Mia's stocking and our Santa picture....a little plain...but will do for this year.

Our ginormous train going around the Christmas tree.

Mia opening her first book.

Finally, I leave you with a family picture. We are all wearing red by accident...fyi...haha.