As I've gotten older and moved away from my home state, Thanksgiving has become our big family holiday. Over the years, we've melded together a sort of holiday tradition that includes bowling with any cousins, aunts and uncles, and friends that are free. After a few games we then head to our aunt Julie and uncle Kevin's house. There we fill up again on leftovers and stay up late playing card games, ping pong, and having lots of laughs. It's one of my most favorite days of the year.
Unfortunately, this year was different for a few reasons. For one obvious reason, I now have a baby. But we also recently had a bout of breast cancer strike our family, more specifically, my aunt Julie. She underwent a double mastectomy the day before Thanksgiving in an effort to eliminate all of the cancer. This definitely put a damper on our usual holiday cheer. Not only is aunt Julie awesome, but she's also known as the best singer, clapper, and cooker in our family. (Just kidding of course. She's really not that great at any of those things...though you CAN hear her claps from miles away). Thankfully the surgery went well and she spent the remainder of the weekend being spoiled by her loving husband, kids, family, and hundreds of friends on Facebook. I can't even begin to count the love, prayers, and shout outs she has received in the last week, and that in itself explains why this Thanksgiving was just different.
Despite some of the sadness of the holidays and obvious family members missing from our celebrations, we did have one event that we were very much looking forward to. And that was introducing Adly to santa. So Sunday morning, we dressed her up in her cutie patootie leopard dress and red bow and headed off to the mall. Adam and I fully expected Adly to have a meltdown, crying her eyes out at this strange man with a big white beard holding her. We would giggle and tell the people to keep snapping pics to get the best screaming picture. It would be classic.
But despite our predictions, Adly ended up loving santa. In fact, her favorite part of him was his beard, which thankfully was real, as she got a good hold of it and gave her best yank. We had decided to go to the local mall in my hometown to avoid the long lines and crowds at malls in Chicago, and I'm so glad we did. The santa was so kind and the elves working the station took their time and let us take multiple pictures to get the best one.
Here's a few shots of our sweet pea's first intro to the jolly, fat man who will stock her tree and stockings full of goodies for many Christmas's to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment