WooOoo, the Christmas season is OFFICIALLY here and I am so freakin’ excited about it. Before we start celebrating all the merry, though, I thought I’d do a little post recapping our Thanksgiving break. This year we spent Thanksgiving down in SoCal with my in-laws and my husband’s side of the family. We haven’t been down to SoCal for Thanksgiving in a few years so we were admittedly long overdue for a trip down during this holiday.
monday
We drove down on Tuesday of Thanksgiving week but the day before (Monday), we stayed home and ran errands/did normal stuff. I had promised D a mommy/son date for the weekend prior but we were picking up Daisy that weekend and it never ended up happening. We rescheduled for this day so I kicked off our Thanksgiving break with a date with my little man!
I took him to dinner…
where he talked my ear off about school and books (of course I loved it). Then we headed to the mall to hit up the bookstore because he kept talking about the Dogman books. He’s read the later ones but not the early ones and kept asking aloud what I thought the first ones were about. It’s okay, D. Mommy can take a hint 😂
After the bookstore, I had to pop by Sephora real quick and this kid was trailing me all throughout the store with his nose buried in the book. It reminded me so much of myself when I was a kid, I love seeing him thoroughly enjoy a good story. He finished the book that night when we got home lol!
tuesday
On Tuesday, we got up bright & early, loaded up our rental minivan, and crossed our fingers/said a prayer as we headed out on the road to where my in-laws live. I’ve mentioned this before in previous posts but we drove down with all three our kids (duh) and both our dogs (what?!) and I was nervous like CRAZY about this drive. We barely fit with all our stuff but ready or not, here we go!
Guys…. the dogs did GREAT. Daisy did GREAT, she blew me away! I think she was happy because we had her in a doggy carseat in between the big kids so she didn’t feel lonely. We stopped a ton so she could have potty breaks in this portable litter box our breeder gave us so she didn’t have any accidents in the car! The car was cramped but I was pleasantly surprised by everyone 🙂
The biggest drama on the drive down was A saying her tummy felt funny and crying in the middle (she was carsick). This is her grumpy, I don’t feel well, face. (She’s not asleep).
Overall the drive took about 7 hours (because of all the puppy potty breaks) and we arrived in SoCal shortly before dinner. We let the dogs run around, ate dinner, then got everyone settled into bed for the night. I was also nervous about Daisy crying at night because she’s not fully potty trained (or crate trained) yet but it worked out because we put her and Kylo in the poolhouse with J so nobody heard them except him. I actually slept surprisingly well LOL!
wednesday
Wednesday morning, we just hung out at home for a bit and then my in-laws took our kids to Target to buy presents … they get so spoiled every time we see them but I learned a long time ago to just leave it be and not say anything. It’s their way of showing love so I just let them do it.
I was walking through my in-laws house and had this weird moment/revelation … the door on the right is the guest room where J & I have stayed whenever we visit over the last 12-ish years. The room on the left is my father-in-law’s study but when we’ve come, we’ve always converted it to a baby room. We had a whole system set up with hooks for removable blackout shades so that we could put a pack n play in there and make it a makeshift nursery for each of our three kids. As our kids one by one got older, and J’s brother Uncle M eventually got married and moved out (he was living at home when J & I got married), we also took over his old room for the older kids to sleep in. At one point, we had kids in every single spare room in this house! E & D sleeping together in Uncle M’s old room, A in the office, and us in the guest room. There were tons of naps had by babies in that office … I remember when D was almost three years old and I was SUPER pregnant with A, he had the WORST sleep regression of his life during a stay when he slept in that office. He started screaming bloody murder and JUMPING out of the pack n play all through the night. It didn’t stop until we got home and bought a crib tent to force him to stay 😬 Anyway, that’s a story for a different time. It was just surreal to me that all three of our kids now sleep in Uncle M’s old room together and the office is just an office.
Also, I found some of J’s old yearbooks from when he was the same age as D so of course had to do a side-by-side comparison. I think D is obviously cuter but there are also still some resemblances I see! What about you?
Our main objective for this trip was to meet our new niece who was born roughly two weeks ago. Otherwise, I think given our circumstances with the new puppy, we wouldn’t have gone through all the effort. On Wednesday, we finally got to meet her!! I didn’t take any pictures because we were really trying to soak up the limited time we had with her but trust me … she is precious. SO sweet 🤩
After our visit to my brother-in-law’s house, we came back home and brought our nephews with us so the cousins could all run around together. Our kids love spending time with their cousins so it was fun all around.
J’s brother swung by before dinner time to hang out a bit and eat with us too. Of course .. the two brothers had to get competitive in SOME way LOL.
Then we all had dinner and the cousins/Uncle M went home. We always eat like KINGS when we’re down here and J & I leave SoCal 5 pounds heavier EVERY TIME WE VISIT. It’s so bad but … so good. We had jjajangmyun this night yummmmmm.
Sometime during this day, our photographer also returned our family photos from our session and I was GEEKING OUT over them. They were so good!! I feel like they belonged in some kind of magazine 😭 I had a hard time choosing which one(s) I wanted for our card this year but I made the decision because the cards are already later than I’d want them to be. Here are some that didn’t make the cut though 🙂
thanksgiving day
Listen. I’m not saying my father-in-law forced me to be his wine buddy but I’m not NOT saying that either … because I woke up with a MASSIVE eyeball headache on Thanksgiving Day. I can usually drink one glass of wine and be good but at dinner the night before, my FIL kept asking, who will drink with me!? Who will have more! J said no because he still had some work to do. Uncle M said no because he needed to drive his kids home. So … I was like okay, I’ll take one for the team and have more wine with you. GAHHHH NOOO! Guys, I was legit nervous my eyeball headache would turn into a full-blown migraine and I’d miss out on Thanksgiving dinner. I chugged an entire bottle of water, took some Advil, sent my kids/husband out with my in-laws and said I need to lie down more if this day had any hope of being salvaged 😂
A few hours later, I was feeling muuuuuch better (thank you Lord!) so I did some final checks on our holiday card and ordered them with a rush delivery added. Fingers crossed that you get them at least by mid-December?
Once everyone got back home, we decided to go out for a “quick” (it took an hour … my mother-in-law is such a liar!! 😂) family walk together. Daisy can’t yet be on ground outside of her home because she’s not fully immunized and could pick up a virus she can’t fight yet so we found ourselves with a conundrum. How do we take a 10 week old puppy on a walk when she can’t .. walk? Solution:
This old snap-and-go stroller we purchased at Disneyland pre-pandemic for A and (I guess?) stashed at J’s parents’ house? I have no idea how or why they had it but I’m glad they did because you bet we loaded Daisy in that thing!
Did we look crazy doing this? Yes. Did we care? No.
Halfway through (or LESS than halfway through) A started complaining that she was tired so … we put HER in the stroller and super dog dad, J, CARRIED Daisy the rest of the way LOL. What a good dog dad 😂🤩
We came home tired, sweaty, and dusty but I think we earned our Thanksgiving dinner. My father-in-law is so sweet (or was he trolling me? ….); he said he heard I’d had a headache earlier and gave me this crazy contraption he found on Amazon that massages your head. It actually was really cool 🤩 It presses all the pressure points on your scalp and base of neck!
I relaxed like robocop for a bit then checked out the Black Friday sales online. I don’t think Lululemon has done Black Friday sales before, have they!? I thought they were notorious for not having sales often or never having promo codes unless they made too much of something. Anyway, I was surprised to see that they had some really desirable gear on sale so … chaching. Sorry, J.
My brother-in-law and his family arrived later in the afternoon and that’s when I got to cooking all the sides for our Thanksgiving dinner. I honestly don’t understand the concept of this and don’t even think that this is a traditional Korean thing per se, but my in laws want me to travel … with my entire family … 7 hours to them … and then host Thanksgiving at their house. Like full on, cook, pull out platters, HOST an entire meal in a house and kitchen that’s not mine 😬 It’s the most bizarre thing and a little frustrating but it’s how they feel loved so I try my best to do it with a cheerful attitude 🙂 Some years are easier than others hahahaha but I’m pretty used to it at this point. This year, I decided to just make it easy on myself and catered ALL the sides from Whole Foods so my “cooking” was mainly reheating things. J took care of the main dish – we did prime rib instead of turkey -and the meal came out great. Here’s our Thanksgiving spread!
I’ll be the first to admit … maybe? Just maybe? I ordered too much food 😂But to be fair, being short on food on Thanksgiving was a big fear of mine so I erred on the side of caution. Here’s my plate all fixed up! We went with disposable as much as possible because there was no way that I was going to do dishes after cooking basically everything.
After eating, we whipped out dessert and the kids lined up to get shots of whipped cream injected by Uncle M 🤦🏻♀️
Then we just relaxed/cleaned up while the cousins all ran around together like hooligans. Their giggles and screams of playing were the sweetest sounds. It made all the work worth it 😉
friday
And that was it! Friday was our day to travel back home so we woke up, got everyone packed, cleaned up around the house a bit and got ready for the long drive back.
J & I did hit up the k-grocery store together before leaving so all in all, we didn’t get going back to NorCal until 11am. It was later than we’d anticipated but that’s fine – a fresh haul of Korean groceries is a good trade-off IMO.
The dogs (and kids 🤪) did so great on the drive down that I was kind of holding my breath, thinking okay maybe the drive home will be terrible because it was so smooth coming down. But no! It was just as smooth going back home!
As much fun as we had with family, I’m always happy to be returning home. The older I get, the more I’m set in my routines and not only did I reallllly miss my ice machine, the air down in SoCal this trip was SO DRY. I actually think there may have been some windstorm happening while we were down there because one night the wind was so loud it woke up all the dogs. My skin was FREAKING out (like, breaking out/rashy) and I got eaten alive by mosquito’s in my in-laws backyard. I can’t remember the last time I had mosquito bites this bad – they’re all over both my ankles and BURN so much that they actually ache and hurt when I walk 🙁
7 hours on the road home and we finally made it. J & I mixed a cocktail to celebrate!
Then we got busy with the work of unpacking/unloading. J had to return the rental minivan and I was trying to get all the kids and dogs dinnered and settled. Of course, while I was running around like an insane person, this little princess was chillaxing.
And here I am now, Friday evening … most kids in bed, fireplace roaring and finishing up this blog post. Daisy is back to barking like a psycho dog in her crate. The week we had her before we left for SoCal, I chalked up all her barking to basic crate training & her getting adjusted to the new home. Then in SoCal, she was SO GOOD. I mean seriously, SO GOOD. She would fuss a LITTLE bit in the crate but then be quiet… I thought, oh wow she got crate trained while were down here! But nope. Back at home, she’s barking incessantly in the crate again. It’s a little grating on my patience if I’m honest 😬😬😬
After J gets back from returning the minivan, we have to prepare for the return of a special elf … and said elf may be bringing our North Pole tradition back with her tomorrow morning. So I’ll have a busy evening tonight. Make sure to check back next week for a post recapping all of that!
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