Thanksgiving 2015

Our Family Portrait

I am behind! I know Thanksgiving wasn't that long ago, but I still feel like I am way off on my blogging. We spent Thanksgiving in South Carolina with my inlaws again this year. Normally we rotate each year, but my mother-in-law will be away this Christmas and we really wanted to drive up to New Jersey to see my extended family and Christmas gives us more time to do that anyway! So Wednesday after work we drove down south. I was feeling pretty woozy most of Thanksgiving to be honest with you, my stomach was just not cooperative, but thankfully it never got too bad! We had a delicious meal with family and spent Black Friday in our pajamas, napping and watching the 80s rewind marathon on VH1. My sister in law has never seen any of the Back to the Future movies and that had to be rectified! We also had a delicious dinner with his grandmother (Skeetsie) and mom and sister on Friday night.

Saturday we got up early and went in to downtown Columbia, a part called Soda City, where they do a sort of street fair/marketplace type thing. I had some shrimp and grits that were pretty decent and a nutella banana crepe that was amazing.

We also walked up to the capitol building and took some pictures near the Christmas tree. All of this is pretty much just like we did last year! Except this year it was about 70something degrees!

We also made a brief stop into the Richland County library so I could look around. This place was HUGE! Three stories easily with tons of space and cool things that made me pretty jealous. The mural below was in their children's area... since I do not have a child I didn't want to be creepy and go in there but I was able to take a picture from the balcony of the floor above. They have trees! Growing in the kids room! So cool.

We ordered some wings and went home to watch the USC/Clemson rivalry game. Honestly we were worried it was going to be a slaughter (with Clemson at #1 and us having a very off season) but it was a surprisingly good game! We almost had a chance at the end but it just was not meant to be!

After the game we drove home and used Sunday to clean, grocery shop, put up some Christmas decorations, and cook for the upcoming week. It was great spending time with family and as always, way too brief!

Thanksgiving 2014

Our Thanksgiving this year was spent at my inlaws in South Carolina and to make it an even bigger family celebration, my parents and brother drove down and spent it with us! So we had all of our parents with us for Thanksgiving this year. Perfection. I love being able to spend the holidays with family and having our complete family together is a luxury that I know many do not have. Very thankful indeed. Especially with our Christmas plans so up in the air it is nice to know we saw all of our parents for Thanksgiving.

Ryan and I with my parents and brother... and the Dup Dup

Selfie style later on with my mother in law and sister in law

We ate so much! I tried to be careful with my gallbladder on the fritz but man I could not resist trying a little bit of everything.

 

Plus there was pie... about four of them. Two apple, two pumpkin plus my mom made pecan pie bars that were so amazing they didn't survive the weekend.

 

As you can imagine we were too full to function much beyond watching football. Naturally my brother insisted on some selfies and I think I broke a top teen rule by taking a screenshot of a snapchat (an app I still don't really understand but have because I have maybe four friends who use it and insist I do too). I don't care though, I love the picture of me and my "baby" brother, who turned 18 years old on the first. Where has the time gone!? We gave him a Casio G-Shock watch that will hopefully last him forever... Ryan has had one since bootcamp and it got him through two deployments and various other crazy situations, so it is a good watch indeed. We also drove to Ryan's grandmother's house and his sister's dad's house to visit that evening.

 

Friday I don't think we got out of our pajamas. We watched a lot of movies, Home Alone, How to Train Your Dragon, The Wizard of Oz, and Love Actually. It was officially after Thanksgiving so I was all about the Christmas movies!

 

Saturday we became productive members of society again and actually got up early to head down to the street fair/market in Downtown Columbia. I love stuff like this! It was chilly bur not freezing and I had some delicious hot cocoa to boot.

I also found pierogies. In South Carolina! Epic, epic win in my book!

 

 

We got some pretty cool things there including home made ravioli (bacon, mozerella and sundried tomato), an art print of Molecular Chemistry that has wine bottles and the chemical breakdown of wine (LOVE), boiled peanuts, hot sauce and some other snacks. Then Ryan realized he never actually showed me Columbia properly in the, you know, seven years we've been together... so I got a tour. We went by the state house and some other really neat buildings and the campus of USC.

Christmas tree near the State House

State House all decorated for Christmas

 

Family selfie in front of the tree

After that we went back to the house with wings (well salad for me) to watch the USC/Clemson rivalry game... and that did not turn out well for us. After winning the last five years in a row Clemson beat the Gamecocks this year. Sad. Well, I guess they can have this one! Saturday night we watched more movies and slept in a bit Sunday before battling traffic to get home again. It took us an hour and a half longer than normal (thanks 95!) but we made it.

Overall it was a wonderful weekend with family and I am so thankful we had it!