Thanksgiving

I love Thanksgiving.  The only pressure of the holiday is the pressure you feel on your belt buckle after eating three times as much as you normally do.  And then comes pie, so make that four times as much.  You get to spend time with your family and lounge about.  One of the better holidays.  There can be some back breaking labor involved though... Elise and I spent literally the whole day previous making desserts - pumpkin gingerbread trifle, pomegranate jello salad, apple pie, chocolate pie and gluten-free cookies & bread for my Pops (don't worry, there were pumpkin and pecan pies purchased from Costco to add to the variety).  Basically, I have never made a pie before and it took three crusts to finally get it right.  I took pictures of all three, but apparently I deleted them already....let's just say "third time's the charm" definitely holds true.

We all flew in to Utah from four different states: my mom from AZ, my Pops from MD, my little sister from OK and me from OR.  My brother and his family unfortunately weren't able to make it, since he had to work Thanksgiving day.  The day was spent at my uncle's with extended family and friends.

Elise & Erik ran in the traditional Turkey Trot (5k) we started five years or so back.  I sadly couldn't participate this year since I sprained my ankle the week before running (in the dark.  Yes, I know....stupid you say....).

Our big family tradition for Thanksgiving is use pipe cleaners to show what we are grateful for (#interpretivepipecleanerart).  It's usually pretty entertaining to say the least, until my brother-in-law comes along and puts us all to shame with his 3-D masterpiece that stands up on its own.  If a trophy were given out every year for the best creation, he would have a bookcase full of them.

It was a fantastic day.  Talk was casually thrown about of Black Friday shopping.  Everyone had an opinion about going to the new outlets that night at 10 pm.  My sister and I jokingly said we wanted to go.  No one knew that I was actually serious.  If I was planning on doing my first ever Black Friday shopping this year, I wanted it to be legit.  But alas, it did not happen.  So we settled on going the next day for a few hours (too long in my opinion) from 11 am to 1 pm.  I did not buy a single thing, but at least we got a picture of all the girlies and I got to hold this adorable girl.