Thanksgiving Recap

I hope everyone had an amazing Thanksgiving holiday with their loved ones and friends!!! I know I did! I swear, each year it just gets better!!!

We head out to my sisters house for the week and actually get to celebrate with two dinners! SCORE!! The first is with my sisters-in-laws and the second is my family with parents, all four of the siblings (including myself) and my siblings significant others and children. The the other time is spent holiday baking with the family and just bonding as only a family can do!

Here are the pics to recap the exciting week! This is the kids table (my adorable nieces and nephew) for my sisters in-laws dinner that was held on Thanksgiving Day.

And then the adult table - sorry very dark!!! Far left is my Dad, then Mom, then me and then sister standing and her husband at the head of the table. His family is on the right side of the table.

This is my adorable sister who hosts the event every year and allows us all to invade her home for a week! We love her for it! (PS-She does Weight Watchers too and hit her goal weight!!! YEA)

 This is me and my niece kissing my other niece! We love her so much - LOL!

This is my nieces and I at Mockingjay!!! It was amazing!! LOVED IT!!! Each year we go see a movie that has just come out - TRADITION!!! LOVE LOVE LOVE

This is a few more of the nieces and nephews...we bonded while playing Scrabble Junior....so fun!

 

This is a picture of a #moviemove. I am not sire if this is at every theater but when we went to Mockingjay they played a little video before the movie about how to make a #moviemove (putting your arm around someone in the theater) - it was hilarious and the girls decided to re-enact it! HA

The older girls went for a healthy walk around the block (4 miles to be exact) while the boys kept the couch warm and the young kids slept???? HA Me and Mom are in the front and sisters in the back.

 

And this is the start of cookie baking! Not a single grain of flour or sugar had been mixed at this point...truly the very start of this years antics!! See, they are all smiling really big?!?!? The tradition for our family is after Thanksgiving we bake for three days (no joke). We make massive amounts of Christmas cookies and then split them all up and we all have trays to take to parties and give as gifts! Its great for bonding, etc and we all love it (I think)

 This is our family dinner. This is my parents. siblings, their significant others and their kids...everyone accounted for - I took the picture :)

 

This is a family game of Rock Band! The kids were hilarious! They loved the microphone!!

  This is where the kids come into play with the cookies! They get to unwrap all the Reese Peanut Butter Cups miniatures and Hershey's kisses! Aunt Sara was supervising in case a few too many went in their mouths! HA

 

The kids also get to help by decorating sugar cookies!  Here are a few that kids decorated. Do you think they could fit any more icing or candy on those!?!?!?! HEE

  

This is two of my nieces rolling the peanut butter dough to be dipped later for the Buckeyes (Peanut Butter Balls) - a family favorite!

 

This is my area every year. I am in charge of dipping. We dip three kinds of cookies. There are white coconut cookies with a cherry in the middle that get dunked in chocolate and also the buckeyes are dunked in chocolate. Then there is an Oreo ball that gets dipped in white chocolate. My brother took some of the workload this year and dunked the white chocolate ones - thanks Matt!!!

 

 

And TADA!!!!! Here is the finished product! View 1 of the cookie table!!!

 

 

View 2 of the cookie table...

 

And another...

 

 YUMMY!!!!!!!!

 

This is a cup that my niece made for herself. She labeled her glass so that we knew if was hers. I think the cookie baking is a tradition that the kids like! I hope it continues for YEARS to come!!!! Her cup looks a little racey but it actually says "Happy Cookie Business"! LOL! Love this family of mine!

I truly hope each and every one of you is (and feels) as blessed as I do on a daily basis! I love this life!!!!!!!!!!

Now back to work and real life........

Stone Harbor = Heaven

WOW!!!

Sorry for the extremely long and unintended break!

I meant to go away for a week and it has been wayyyyyy longer!

I was enjoying my week long vacation away and then I had to play catch-up for days afterwards! ICKY!

But, I am back now and I would like to formally thank you for not de-following me!! ha ha

Below is the vacation pictures and an update on the trip - I went to Stone Harbor, NJ...It is by far my very favorite beach on this planet. Both because it is a great, clean, family oriented beach and because it is very sentimental to me also.

I promise that there are not many as I was focusing on enjoying the break and did not take a lot of pics at all!

Here are my vacation nails! I wanted to select a bright beach color along with some Jamberry wraps! I think I loved them all week long!!! You can order your own here... http://annsterw.jamberrynails.net
...there are over 300 styles to choose from and they last over two weeks!!!

Since vacation is when the whole family is together, we decided to celebrate my little sisters birthday while we were all together...even though it was a few weeks early. Any excuse for an ice cream cake right?!?!? 

We always run the Ron Jaworski 5K (fights childhood obesity) when we are on vacation in Stone Harbor. This year some of the little kids joined in and ran too! I love that they are running with us and enjoy coming along at such a young age!!!This is our pre-race group photo!
 

 

This was our one family dinner night out. We cook in every night and only eat out on one special night - this year we went to Sylvester's in Avalon - YUM!!!!

 

 This is our awesome family pyramid on the beach!!! The only ones that were with us on vacation that were missing were my Mom and Dad and Brother in Law.  LOVE IT!!!!

Here is the family waiting to ride on the free jitney to go to the Stone Harbor Craft Fair. It is huge and lots of fun...we got to this every year also!

 

And this is me braving a lesson and 1 hour paddle board session on the bay! I loved every second of this! Once you get stable and comfortable, this was soooo much fun! I cannot wait to try it again!!!

 

Thanks for sticking with me through my bloggy break! I am back!