Black Friday

Ok I love Thanksgiving and this year and especially excited for it because our good friends Bill and Ron are coming into town to spend Thanksgiving with us, and we have some friends coming up that evening or next morning to go shopping with us! I am so grateful to be surrounded by family and friends whom I love and care about so much!

Our family also has one of the coolest traditions EVER!!! We do Iron Chief America for Thanksgiving. My dad usually takes the meets and all the other kids get a separate secret ingredient, and they have to make 3-5 dishes with that ingredient. I LOVE IT!!!

This year we are doing secret movies instead of ingredients. And, the kids are each getting a cook book from a movie for which they have to find 3-5 dishes they'd like to make. Some of the secret movies are Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Suess. It will be so much fun!!! We have 3 traditional ovens and a light oven in our house to accommodated the cooking spree. At the end my grandmother and mother usually do a taste test, and hand out awards! After that everyone sits around watches movies and eats until they can't move. :)

But this year, I am looking forward to Black Friday just as much as I am Thanksgiving! I LOVE Black Friday, perhaps it comes from another tradition my family has. We get a couple of the newspapers and sit around on the floor with them all spread out in the morning looking though to see where we want to go. Ever sense I was small I got the impression that this was special. I never fully understood that this i when my parents and santa did their shopping, however I did get to circle things I would like in the ads and put my name next to them.

This year I get to be the mom, who get's to play with the papers and make a shopping list. Josh has his role as a very special part of Christmas as this is the first Christmas he'll be waking up at 2am (why he feels the need to do that is beyond me when he could just stay up til 11pm, but whatever! He's excited too.) We are so silly but you know what, it feels good to be able to be this way. We have been putting a little money aside for the past 3 months just for Black Friday and with a caravan of friends joining us I can't wait! My parents are even coming with us :) The kids will all be staying home, and that night we'll put up the Christmas tree. What more could you want in a holiday?