Thanksgiving 2008

I’m late in posting this, but oh well! Better late than never! What a whirlwind weekend Thanksgiving was! I had been waiting for Thanksgiving since October, and I was so so SO excited for it finally to arrive. We were scheduled to leave Madison on the 26th at 3pm after all of John’s classes. I was heartbroken to find out the week before that none of those classes were mandatory, meaning we could’ve left Madison on the 24th. John and I desperately tried to scramble for a 24th flight, but were informed that we would lose our Sunday flight back. So instead we chose to wait standby for the 6am flight to SFO.

We ended up not sleeping at all since the airport opened at 4:30am, and the procrastinators we are, we didn’t start packing and cleaning the apartment until around midnight. We had no problem getting onto our flights, and we arrived at the SFO airport at 9:45am. I was really excited. Note to self: if the plane takes off and there is an empty aisle seat, grab it, or else random loud strangers will sit there and bug you the entire time.

My mom, aunt and sister picked us up from SFO and drove us down to SJ. We dropped off our luggage and then went to Eastlake for lunch. And then the rest of the day I slept. John and I slept for a bit, but then he had to get up and pick up his sister from the bart, and hang out at his house. But I just kept on sleeping. At night our bffs LeAnne and Alex came over, along with our siblings and we played Loaded Questions. If you haven’t already played this game, you’re totally missing out.

I think it’s a lot more fun making up answers than being truthful. And that was pretty much our Weds.

On Thursday, we woke up to the sound of my sister climbing into our bed and telling us to get up. A few minutes later, my brother did the same thing. So of course, we got up. And for the next two hours, I attempted to help my mother cook. And like usual fashion, we left the house 2 hours after we wanted to. We ended up getting to my grandmother’s house in Vallejo around 2pm. And the funny thing is that we weren’t the last ones! We’re ALWAYS the last ones, but this time we weren’t!

The house was full of a bunch of strangers I didn’t know and never met. Even though I’m usually the outgoing one, I kept my distance and just hung out with the family I knew. Turns out that those people I didn’t know were relatives–some cousins and aunts and uncles, from a side I have no idea. Everyone tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t really care. For the most part I played with my little cousins. I loved playing with the kids, it was fun. They’re all getting so big! We took a timeout for family pictures. I’m glad that we did. It used to bother me when I was little since it cut into my play time, but now I love documenting family gatherings.

My siblings with my little cousin–he was our bible bearer

My other cousin rockin out on Rock Band

Me with my little cousins and brother

Me and the new hubby. This was the first year that he went to Thanksgiving in Vallejo with me out of the almost 10 years of dating!

All my cousins on my dad’s side–minus my uncle’s 3 kids who are never all together

My dad’s immediate family. (top) My dad, uncle, grandfather, uncle. (bottom) Aunt, Grandmother, Aunt.

And then a nice big family portrait. We had fun trying to take these.

The interesting part of Thanksgiving is that I didn’t stuff my face this year. In fact, when I reflect on how much I ate, it really wasn’t that much. I didn’t notice until afterwards. I think I may have been pacing myself, and in the end paced myself TOO much. Our Vallejo Thanksgiving is always our “Filipino” thanksgiving, because there usually ends up being more Filipino food than “traditional” Thanksgiving dishes. This was the first year we didn’t have turkey there. We also didn’t have mashed potatoes, gravy, or ham. We randomly had stuffing. Most of the dishes were fish, which I thought was funny. And I may have ate my share of cupcakes. YUM!

We ended up spending a lot more time in Vallejo than we usually do. We didn’t leave our Thanksgiving lunch until 6:30pm. We drove back to San Jose, and had my parents drop us off to John’s aunt’s house for his side’s Thanksgiving dinner. I stuffed my face more than I would have wanted to. I felt bad that I already ate, and his aunt kept saying that I never eat their food. This is totally untrue, but of course I felt obligated to eat more. John had ordered a 9lb. ham for his family side of 10. Almost one lb. per family member. But the ham was good, especially since we bought the champagne mustard. Yum!

John’s parents

His aunt and sister

John’s dad was enjoying John’s hat

Me and my SILs

John’s cousin and gf

We hung out there for about 2 hours, and then we left with John’s siblings to go to our final Thanksgiving dinner of the day, my other grandmother’s house. Finally we got to a house that had turkey, but by that point I was stuffed. I managed to shove one petite pumpkin tart in my mouth, and was set.

What my normal Thanksgiving dinner looks like

We did the usual gossiping. I played with the kids. Talked to the aunts. Definitely a nice night.

John took this opportunity to show everyone our wedding pictures. It started with just my grandmother, then grew to the other aunts.

Then, of course, we had to take pictures.

All of my cousins on my mom’s side, minus 1 cousin who came later, plus John and my sister’s bf on the far right

Then all the adults. We couldn’t all fit in one room…or we could’ve, we were just too lazy to leave the living room. Everyone is almost nicely paired off. (left to right) Uncle with wife, Aunt with husband, my parents, Uncle with wife, Grandmother, Uncle and his dog, Uncle and wife, Aunt and husband, Aunt, Uncle with Parter. You can easily identify which couple was not sitting together.

There was a quick family picture too

And I just have to share the next sequence of pictures because you can literally SEE how excited my cousin is. And I can’t even remember what we were doing to make him laugh! I think we were just taking picture of him.

And then the ONE cousin who came late:

We made him stand behind the chairs because we told him we’d photoshop him in the picture, hahahaha.

And that was the end of Thanksgiving. Oh, but wait! What comes after Thanksgiving? Black Friday! Though I usually never participate in Black Friday, this year was different. This year my birthday fell on Black Friday, and I lovingly called it Black Birthday. I thought it’d be a fun memorable way to celebrate my birthday. So after my mom’s Thanksgiving, we went back home, changed clothes, and got ready for Black Friday shopping. It was me, John, his sisters and my brother. After dressing up, we realized that we all had something in common:

My sister on the far right wasn’t going shopping with us, just wanted to participate in the picture. And John’s sister didn’t have her sweater with her, but she was wearing blue, so they decided to improvise. Then my brother who was coming with us, but is still in high school, wanted to be cool too:

What can I say, we love UCs.

So we headed out to the Gilroy outlets at midnight since they actually opened at midnight, and there was a HUGE, enormous, gigantic line to exit. Luckily we recognized this early, and coasted down the far left lane, and exited one exit after our destination. We ended up getting parking ridiculously fast since we parked a little ways away. We spent a good 3 or 4 hours JUST in PacSun. We hit up a few other stores, and after 8 hours of shopping, this was what we got:

And everyone was knocked out, except me of course, who was the driver

We had actually stopped by Nordstroms so that I could get the one thing I wanted for my birthday:

My classic tall chocolate brown Ugg boots. Woo hoo. It has made living in the snow MUCH more stylish and bearable! Yay!

And thus ended the loooooooooooooongest Thanksgiving “Day.” Three Thanksgivings, and 1 Black Friday. Sounds almost like that Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon movie, Four Christmases. I think we handled our first married holiday together quite nicely. Bring on Christmas and New Years!