Thanksgiving Holiday Round-Up

The Thanksgiving 4 Day weekend is always one of my favorite times of year: So many of my favorite things rolled into a 4 day holiday!  Here's the rundown of the 2012 Turkey Day Weekend:

Thursday morning, I got up early for my annual running of the Turkey Trot 5K.  We had lots of friends join us to either run or spectate, so it was a festive way to kick off the day.  We had perfect running weather, and I ran my guts out and scored myself a new 5K PR: 26:35!  Shaved 74 seconds off the old PR!  I was pretty proud of myself. 

Here's me and my cheering section afterward:

After the race, everyone came back to our place for some donuts and coffee to celebrate strong running all around -- I think everyone who ran met or exceeded their race goals -- and then once everyone packed up and left post-race, we put the parade on while we tended to the Turkey Day dishes that we needed to prep.  Then, in the early afternoon, we headed over to our host's house for the afternoon/evening festivities.

We had a wonderful day over there.  The kids played, the adults drank and snacked, and then we all stuffed our faces with an overwhelmingly awesome dinner.

Here's Caleb and his buddy Mason "driving" the Jeep:

Here's Norah taking a little break from running around (she and the older kids spent several hours literally running in circles):

And, here are the kids (minus Caleb) at the kids' table during dinner.  There wasn't much eating going on there, but they had fun dining together:

When we got home Thursday night, we had two very tired munchkins (and we were pretty spent ourselves), and let's just say it was an easy bedtime! 

On Friday, we drove to Miami to meet up with Jerry's sister and her family, who had flown in to depart for a cruise, so we spent the afternoon and evening at their hotel in Miami, and again, the kids wore themselves out, this time playing with their cousins.

Sunday was our 7th wedding anniversary, so Saturday night, we had a sitter and Jerry and I went out to celebrate -- by going Christmas shopping!  Kinda lame for an anniversary, but it was awesome to shop without the kids, for the kids, and simply taking our time walking around Target is pretty much heaven to us.  We still took the time to have a nice dinner together, but it felt good to get 90% of our shopping done too.

Today, then, we all had the groggy-eyed adjustment of returning to work and school and the shock of being back on a schedule this morning was a rude awakening, but at least I only have 3 weeks left of the term, and then it's Christmas Vacation!  I think I can survive until then.