Family Traditions

Thanksgiving weekend in the Aleksza house is full of family traditions. Some started prior to Katherine being born... Others started after... and some started (hopefully) this year. =)

We kicked off the holiday weekend on Wednesday evening with a pajama pizza party. With all of the cooking that still needed to be done in preparation for Thursday, we decided pizza would be a good way to avoid a dinner mess in addition to the turkey day cooking. Seems perfectly reasonable!! And I will have you know that the day before Thanksgiving is one of the most popular days of the year for pizza. Don't believe me?

Read on: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pizza-sales-boom-on-eve-of-thanksgiving-2011-11-23

Actually I read a stat like this a few years ago and that's where I got the idea to order pizza. I figured if it was good enough for so many other people, it could be good enough for me. And seriously. I do so heart me some pizza.

After dinner S started making some of the sides and such and K and I got to work on our family race day shirts. Enter: New Family Tradition. I hope. Maybe? The shirts were some of K and my finest artistic work. Can you REALLY go wrong with hand turkeys all over a shirt?! We say... No way. Unfortunately others at the race didn't have quite the festive approach that we did. *More later on this.*

K was so excited that she woke up and put her clothes on in the middle of the night.



Thursday morning we woke up bright and early and headed to the race. Our first Turkey Trot!! K and I were SUPER excited. S was... well... Happy we were excited! When we arrived I was a little disappointed to see that there were so few people bedazzled in festive gear. Few as in, pretty much us. I was hoping S wouldn't notice but alas, he did. Fortunately he was a good sport about the whole thing!





The first race up was the 1mi run. S, K and I did it together. I pushed K in the jogger while S and I ran. S did an AWESOME job completing his first one mile race in 12minutes. A PR for sure!! =)

My race was next... I completed the 8k in 54:20. A PR for me as well! I'll admit to being unprepared for a few of those hills but I took them on! I had turkey to eat! While I ran K and S decorated the finish line for me. So cute!!



K's race was the last one of the morning and she was ready to go.



After waiting 90 minutes for my race and S's race to finish it was *finally* her turn. She knew exactly where the finish line was. I asked her whether she wanted me to run with her and she told me "no, I want to do it all by myself!!!" Okey dokey. It appeared as if there were about 100 or so kids that ran in the race. K was in the middle of the pack and when she saw me coming up behind her (just trying to keep up so I could take some pictures) she dead stopped, turned around and said "I told you I was running by myself!!" Whoa. Turned around and started running again. hehehe



After her race she told S and I that she was amazing and she won the race. =) She did after all receive a gold medal for her amazing finish. Her summary of the race: You run. You stop. You get a medal. Post race. With medal. And "game face"! =)



Post race we went to Whole Foods (all three races finished in their parking lot) and got a little coffee/water and a breakfast snack. My sister N came over and we spent the rest of the day in pajamas, on the sofa, perusing the black friday ads along with watching movies and the Macy's parade. The parade was a big hit. Particularly the Sesame Street float. K and I both got up to dance to the music. Good song. =) Good times.

As many of you know black Friday shopping is a tradition for S and I. We've spent the last 10 years waking up (very) early on Friday morning to head out for the deals of the year. There are a lot of people that say that the deals are the same other times during the year - but I can tell you, for two people that "research" through the year, that's not the case. We start planning in September/October and wait for the ads to be available online so we could start planning times, routes, etc. Yes. We're those people!! A few things we won't do: Stand outside all night waiting for something. Get riled up if we don't happen to get something. Treat the night as something other than an adventure. For us it's been more about the find and the fun that goes along with it.

This year was the first year that S and I didn't go out together. We typically have someone who's at our house that can stay with K while they sleep and we shop. This year we didn't and we thought it slightly irresponsible to take K out in the middle of the night. So she went to bed at 7:30 and I headed out at 9:30 to some of the stores that started their sales at 10. I had to stand outside of Target for 90+ minutes waiting for the midnight opening but I had good company around me. The couple behind me kept me entertained for the majority of the time. They also helped me when I was fortunate enough to land one of the TVs that were on-sale. A 46" TV for a 59" girl... Trouble!!! Thanks to the help of my friends we got it outside and in my car. I came home after that and got a couple of hours of sleep before the family headed out at 5:30am. Yes, we did end up waking K up to go out for a bit. She was pretty excited to "go shopping in the dark" and see the sun come up. I didn't feel like a total jerk mom since she did get about 10 hours of sleep before she got up. She wanted to go shopping at Target, the ABCD store (AKA Kohls) and Walmart. She'd seen their ads. Girl is already a black Friday go-getter! =) The rest of the day on Friday we spent lounging about again. We needed our rest in preparation for Saturday's events.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving is our traditional day to go Christmas tree shopping. Some people go to local tree stands to get their trees. We go to the mountain to get our tree. We started this tradition before K was born. The first year it was a disaster. I got a speeding ticket along the way (jerk of a cop who didn't even speak to me!!! - and I maintain it was all the red Aurora's fault!!!) We called the farm that we were going to and told them that we were on our way but were running late (due to aforementioned issue). They agreed to wait for us to arrive. We did. And it was dark. We picked our tree by the headlights of my car. Oh yeah. Awesome. I walked up to the first tree I saw and said THIS ONE. I was done. Good memory.

The following year when we got a post card from the same farm we decided to go back, and hopefully avoid the horrid red aurora in the process. An annual trip to the Circle C Farm in Boone, NC is now a family tradition. The farm is wonderful, the people are very nice and the trees are beautiful. We get two trees there for the price of what one tree would be in Raleigh and a family adventure in the process! =) This year when we told K that we were going to go to the mountains to get a Christmas tree she asked, "are we going to take a hay ride & get popcorn too?!" She remembered that from last year... Yes, yes, dear we will. She was VERY excited when she finally got her popcorn.



As for our tree shopping this year... We left Raleigh with a target of a 7-8ft tree. I found my perfect tree as soon as we got out of the car and onto the hay ride.



Okay. So it was probably 20' tall. But seriously - it was perfect. I heard "aaaahhhhhhhhhh"s in my head as I looked at it, mixed with the words of my very own Ebineezer saying "NO WAY!!!" BAH HUMBUG!!! Fine. But we have a two story foyer. I can make it fit!!! The look I got said he'd make it fit somewhere else too... mmm. No thanks. Then we found Ks version of the perfect tree. Yeah... cute, but not so much. We finally convinced her to let the "charlie brown tree" remain on the mountain so it could grow big like the mommy & daddy trees.



We continued our search... for more than 2 hours looking for family agreed upon perfect trees. They were all so big!! It was the same area of the farm we went to last year. Evidently trees grow a lot in a year's time. Most of the trees were 9' or taller. As we looked for 7-8' trees it felt like we were looking for "wee trees".

At last, we found the perfect trees. After tagging and waving over a man to cut them, twice, and then changing our minds. Yeah. We were those people. Similar to last year, our perfect trees were right beside each other. I call them "sister trees". We knew the one looked kinda big, but it seemed the right size, or so said the pole we were using to measure it with. As they drug the trees down the mountain and they had to go into the gas powered tree wrapper thingy, we knew we were in trouble...



When we brought it into the house and it rubbed across our 10' ceilings... Mm. Yup. That confirmed it. So we gave it a lil hair cut and all is well. As I sit and look at the tree I'm giggling a little wondering how in the world we are going to light the thing. I'm thinking of just running strands of lights straight up the tree. Does it help that it's beautiful??

Sunday was a day to regain control of the house, get the trees inside and do other assorted chores. Like planting 90 tulip bulbs, get the outside lights working and hang some pictures. We hadn't hung the pictures back up since the house was sided/painted and I had the brilliant idea to get them all back on the walls. We did. Only one minor, okay medium, mess in the process when we also attempted to hang the mirror in our bedroom. Yes, that would be drywall patch. :0/



Now we're back to work and school -> looking forward to the next long weekend in December. =) We hope all of you had a wonderful holiday weekend filled with fun & memory making!!

xo
The As

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