Thanksgiving 2019

  After my mom died, many people told me we had to make new traditions to help with the pain.  Some of my most painful moments during the first few years was realizing how much I would be missing:  Black Friday shopping, decorating for Christmas, attempting to make Christmas cookies and miserably failing but laughing the entire time.  Sometimes the realization that these things would never happen again with my mom would hit me so hard I would feel physical pain.  But now -- almost 8 years later -- we have new traditions and it feels amazing.  I'm so thankful for my in-laws who have helped us create a fantastic Thanksgiving tradition -- something that the twins will now take with them in their memories and think back on.

Allie girl has the most amazing heart and made me this little note that she tucked into my laptop.  Such a nice thing to find at work!

Allie is still a lover of all things art!

We celebrated the biggest party night of the year at our favorite local brewery!

Battleship and brews!

 We hosted Thanksgiving at our home this year.  It was an absolute breeze for me as the kids were great helpers with cleaning the house and Michael did ALL of the food prep!!

I drank coffee and watched the Macy's Day Parade!

And snuggled with my favorite snuggle buddy.

We hosted Gammy and Poppy and the DiFranks!

They enjoyed seeing Rhys' new favorite spot to take in all the comings and goings of our kitchen.

"What's up???"

What a pretty kitty....on top of the fridge!

The kiddos had a good time playing together!

Just a bit cold -- we were able to get outside some!

 Cam mastered the cartwheel! Allie is getting close!

Midday snack -- Allie had her first experience of eating a Fluffer Nutter sandwich!

Nap time for the kitten.

Loving my new camera!!!

The boys played some football.

And some pool....

Michael was the king of Thanksgiving again.  Everything was delicious!

Poppy fried a turkey.

I think Poppy fed Rhys almost an entire turkey.

Dinnertime!

Cameron enjoyed using this box he made at school -- he gave everyone a slip of paper that we wrote down what we were thankful for.  Cameron then pulled them all out of the box and read them for the table.  So nice!

We also read our feathers from Clucky - we wrote down things we were thankful for during the month of November.

And we feasted!

"I'm still hungry."

Cole found a nice spot to play with Legos!

Being silly!

Rhys...."Are you going to finish that?"

"Just a little bit, please?"

Side note -- Rhys then spent the next 3 days sleeping off her food hangover.

Per tradition - we start Christmas prep the second Thanksgiving dinner is over!

First thing - we all snuggled up to watch the Polar Express!

  We headed to our favorite Christmas tree farm on Friday.

He is ready!

This is the one!

Great job, Cam!

This is so much easier now that we don't have to carry our children but rather our children carry our trees!

Love this!

Still hunting for a few more trees!

 We then headed home to begin decorating!

Per tradition -- we used Great-Grandma Carr's decorations and the ornaments Michael and myself have gotten the twins over the years -- as well as the special ones made by Tissy!

Took a break from decorating to have some hot chocolate!

Per tradition -- Michael and Cam worked on a Christmas puzzle.  When it's done, we'll glue it together and add it to our collection!

Mantel is done!

Getting there!

 We headed to the Coopersburg Tree Lighting on Saturday.

SANTA!

 This pretty much sums up the dynamics of the Rocc Flock...time to light the tree!

Per tradition, we checked out the amazing house off of 309. 

 Per tradition....Michael participated in No-Shave November...he FINALLY shaved it off on December 1st...but not until after he allowed this to be on his face for a few hours....

 Per tradition, the elves returned Thanksgiving night!  Their job is to keep an eye on the twins and report back to Santa each evening!

Getting ready for Christmas is hard work!

We got our letters ready for the big guy!

  I've been trying to walk a bit more recently  -- the twins have heard me talk about my walks with Grandma Stanton around "the block".  I ask each twin if they'd like to join me all the time -- and finally on this day I got a yes!

We love the month of December!!!

 Few random shots to record...

Poor Simon was ready to come down - Miles was very comfortable where he was.

Rhys has a weird infatuation with our dishwasher.

I'm trying to capture memories on videos a bit more....this was a good one of Cam and me dancing!

Looking forward to more holiday memories!