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Give Thanks With A Grateful Heart

We had such a wonderful weekend home celebrating Thanksgiving with my family.  It was actually the first time I've had it off in three years, and it was the first trip home for Thanksgiving since the year were married.  


Eric took off on Wednesday to work around the house, so we were able to leave fairly quickly after fighting traffic to get dinner and gas and to pick  up a prescription.  


Thanksgiving morning started with the Macy's Day parade followed by lunch with my dad's family.  I really didn't get too many pictures since I was chasing this sweet guy.  


We went for a second dinner at my aunt's house for my mom's family.  By this point we had scoured the adds and knew exactly what we wanted to get for our annual Black Friday shopping.  It's at this point that Eric and I made a flying trip to the Dollar Store to get some Hot Wheels...buy one get TWO free. 


We stayed a little longer at my aunts house before heading back to change into comfortable clothing for our shopping excursion.  My parents watched Eli, so we headed out to fight the crowds.  The first stop was Wal Mart...INSANE!  We parked in another store's lot, but the walk was well worth it since we stocked up on everything we came for. 


As we were leaving my brother called to say that he and his wife had picked up the voucher for the camera we wanted at K-Mart...yes, I said K-Mart.  We met them at Target to pick up the paper and then headed to get our camera.  While we were there we were able to pick up several more items from our list.  I waited in line to purchase some of them while Eric headed to electronics to take care of the camera.  I know Black Friday gets a bad reputation thanks to greedy, pushy people, but it can be a fun and positive experience if you have the right attitude.  Part of that is enjoying great conversation with those near you in line. 

In just two short stops we had everything on our list, so we headed to Waffle House to eat even more.  It was a nice little "date."  Ha!  I guess having kids changes your perspective!  Anyway, we made a second Wal Mart run before heading home to crash.  It's the earliest we've ever been in...11:45!


We woke up on the real Black Friday and got ready for our family pictures- which I will show you in a later post.  Anyway, we left a few minutes early so that we would swing by Home Depot to pick up another item from our list.  After the pictures we had a nice family lunch at Chili's before heading to the mall for more shopping.  Would you believe that by this point we had gotten EVERYTHING off our lists!

As you can imagine, we were pretty exhausted at this point so we headed home to eat chilli with my family and to watch the UK game.


By the time Saturday arrived we were ready to once again brave the crowds.  I say "we" but Eric, Shannon, and Clay went to shoot instead.  That meant we ladies would go shopping and have my dad chauffer us around.  He was a great sport!  

After another successful trip, we met up at Sir Pizza for more family fun.  Then my mom and dad took us out to see Southern Lights at the Kentucky Horse Park.  Eli was in complete awe!  He laughed and clapped and pointed.  There is nothing more magical than a child at Christmas. 


Leaving is always a little rough on everyone, but it must be done.  We actually hit the road a little early today in an effort to miss the traffic.  Plus, we had hopes of getting the Christmas tree up.  It didn't pan out so well.  


We did however make it home in time to get our new dog.  That's a whole another posts, so stand by.  I'll also try to get some family pictures up too!

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