Thanksgiving weekend started off early for me on Wednesday when I left work at noon to go pick up Mason. His school closes early on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and I was just so excited to have a job that was flexible enough to let me pick him up this year instead of making Seth take time off.
I thought I was golden... picking Mason up around 12:30pm, bringing him home, and putting him down to nap. I knew I was taking a chance since 12:30 is nap time but I just handed him some snacks and my phone and we were good to go. We got home quickly and I put him down and got to work. I figured I had a good 4+ hours until Seth would get home and I could work on the present I was making for him (more on that tomorrow!). I got out all of my materials and brought everything downstairs and spread out all over the table. I was doing my thing and everything was going well until the doorbell rang. I figured it was just the FedEx or UPS guy dropping off a package and then leaving so I walked over to the door and through the blinds I could see who it was... SETH. Noooooo! I mean, I'm usually happy he's home early, but not when I'm working on a special present for him! Ugh. So needless to say, he ruined the surprise, but I was planning to give it to him that night anyway since it was too heavy for me to carry back upstairs anyways. So it all worked out in the end.
Thanksgiving morning we spent at the turkey trot. My friend works for the chamber of commerce and is the one that puts on the turkey trot and we've gone every year that she's worked there (minus one when we were up north visiting my family) to support her.
Not too shabby of a view while we walked...
Livin' the life
And then... if our 3.1 miles wasn't enough... we spent too much time talking with our friend before heading back for the bus back to the car and we... missed the last bus!!! Literally as we were walking up to the bus stop, the bus drove away. I figured it wouldn't be SO horrible to walk back to the car, especially since we'd be eating a lot later, but then I realized it was 3 more miles UP HILL. And then I died a little inside. But nevertheless, we had no choice so we walked. And Mason? He was a rockstar!!! We pretty much refused to carry him since it was all up hill but he didn't care and totally didn't mind walking and walked about 95% of the way back to the car. Thank you Mason! A Thanksgiving miracle :)
We got back to the house, put Mason down for a nap, and then got ready for dinner. And when we got to Seth's mom's house, we were greeted with the cutest little veggie turkey tray made by my niece!
The next morning we had planned to go to breakfast and get our Christmas tree. We had originally planned to do so as a family but we stopped by Seth's mom's house on our way to drop something off and our niece, Emma, was there and she wanted to come so we invited her to join us. First stop : The Original Pancake House where I got my very favorite thing, a bacon waffle.
After we stuffed ourselves some more, we were off to find our Christmas tree! I had originally wanted to go back to where we got it last year, Irvine Park, but my sister in law said that Home Depot was super cheap so I reluctantly agreed to check it out first. I don't know if it was just because it was the day after Thanksgiving, but they didn't really have a good selection and all of the trees were either too tall or too short for what we wanted, so, in the end, I ended up winning and we headed to Irvine Park. Emma was a big, big helper and helped to wrangle Mason while he tried to run all around the place looking for the perfect tree.
Love this picture where he's totally copying her and shielding his eyes from the sun.
While Seth unloaded the tree and installed the base, Emma and Mason decorated the windows with the Christmas window clings that I had picked up already and then shortly after, Mason took a nap.
For lunch, Emma decided that she wanted to make us something, but we didn't have all the ingredients so I took her to the grocery store, we picked up the ingredients, and Seth helped her make lunch (though she probably did 90% of the work, he was there to supervise with the stove). After Mason woke up, we headed over to Nanny's house for leftovers and then came back to snuggle on the couch in our pj's.
Saturday was pretty low key. In the morning Mason went to his ABA class and I went to work for a few hours. I got back just in time to go with Seth to pick Mason up and when we got home, Mason took a nap. Nanny came over a couple hours later to watch Mason so Seth and I could go out to celebrate our friend Seth's birthday and it was nice to actually have an adult night out!
Sunday morning and afternoon were pretty low key and involved lots of laundry, a trip to Costco and the grocery store, and a little decorating of the tree. We had already put the lights on on Friday, but no decorations. I let Mason pick out the first ornament and of course he went straight to Mickey's Clubhouse.
After lunch, Mason took a nap, I attempted to do 286782362 things at once, including starting to address our Christmas cards! I'm pretty excited about them and can't wait to send them out hopefully in the next few days.
I ended up needing to wake Mason up around 4:40pm since we needed to leave at 4:45pm to meet Desiree, Scott, Marcus, and Julia for the LA Zoo lights. We had so much fun last year (despite it being like the ONLY day it rained in Southern California all season) that we wanted to do it again. Thankfully this time, there was no rain :)
And today we're back to the daily grind. Our holiday weekend high is wearing off and it's back to work for me. Happy Monday!
