My Blessing - Our Thanksgiving

These are two of my greatest blessings in life.

My little Rockstar Diego.

My Little Princess Alayna.

Our Thanksgiving was great and I hope yours was too. With such big families on both mine and my husbands sides... things get very hectic around this time of year. But somehow we are able to make it work.

Thanksgiving morning we woke up and went to my Mother in Law's house to help cook. I have NEVER helped cook before not even with my family so I was scared. My Mother in Law, who usually does all the cooking by herself, was barely coming back from a cruise and that's why we were commissioned to help. When I got there the only thing I did was make mashed potatoes because by the time we got there my sister, and sister in law, had already done everything. So I was pretty much off the hook. The rest of the afternoon was just spent lounging around.

I did let my son do a mini photoshoot of my daughter and I though. The following are two shots that I thought came out decent. Everything else was just a mess.

And a family shot with Alayna not looking as always!

So my Mother in Law finally arrives at about 3:30pm and we're starving by this time. As soon as everyone arrives we say Grace and start digging in. Above is a picture of my kids waiting patiently for some food!

Then it was off to my parents to celebrate with my family as well. Where I ate a second plate full of food. Yummy! We usually have a lot of family from California that join us... but this year it was a few of us only. It was nice though. The food was great! And the pumpkin pie was even better!

Then it was time to mentally prepare ourselves for... BLACK FRIDAY shopping! Oh yeah! We started doing this 3 years ago (My sister, my brother in law, my husband and I) and we get some good sales. Mostly on presents for our children. This year we are so very broke that we had to take advantage of the amazing sales. So we took off at 1am to secure a spot in line at Toys R Us. When we got there the line was still pretty short! We were among the first 50 people in line. I was so excited! The only drawback was that it was freezing cold and that was something we were not expecting, nor were we prepared for.

We expected it to be cold so we did have sweaters and pants... but the temps got down to 60 degrees and we had slight wind. For living in Arizona, and having such nice weather throughout the day, we were shocked that it was so cold. The cold was hard to bear. The 2 guys had to end up driving back to our house and bringing like 6 blankets that we layed across the floor and wrapped ourselves up in to keep warm. We slept maybe 30 minutes while the guys stayed awake waiting. It was an adventure for sure.

Here's me and my cousin Chris goofing off!

They finally opened Toys R Us at 5am, on schedule and I got pretty much everything I was looking for. Although it was pure madness in there and my cousin Chris followed me around like a hawk so that no one would bump into my tummy. We managed to make it out alive! And in 20 minutes.

Afterward we went to Walmart and got there very shortly after they opened... so I got very good deals there as well. By the time we were done it was about 7am. We had to stop and McDonalds and have some breakfast before heading home to FINALLY get some rest! But it was all worth it. I got $250 worth of toys and clothes for my kids for $100! Oh yeah! Santa did some good shopping this year!