Scenes from Thanksgiving Week + The Weekend

Good morning. I hope you’re getting settled back into your normal routine after Thanksgiving week. It was such an incredible blessing for me to have my nieces here with me for most of the week and I have lots of photos to share from it.

Thanksgiving is always my favorite holiday of the year because I love the focus on gratitude, good food and spending time with people you care about.

I picked up the girls on Tuesday afternoon. I met their mom near Augusta, GA for the exchange and we turned around and headed straight back to Charlotte. We stopped at ALDI on the way home to pick up some kid-friendly groceries to have on hand.

We also stopped for cupcakes! 🙂

Dinner for the girls. Kilynn is 5 and quite a bit pickier than her sister. She LOVES avocado and ate this + the half on her sister’s plate. She also ate about a bajillion clementines while she was with me.

Jaidyn is 9 and will eat pretty much anything. She asked for spinach salad for her vegetable with dinner!

Tanner and I had honey balsamic glazed chicken breasts over couscous with green beans. I love this chicken breast recipe!

The dogs loved the girls and the girls loved the dogs. They were pretty much inseparable for the time they were here. Sullie slept on that little rug next to their bed every night!

On Thanksgiving Eve, Tanner and I taught Butterball Bootcamp at the studio. It’s the 7th year in a row that we’ve done this two-hour bootcamp on the day before Thanksgiving and it’s always a popular event. We sold out at 99 yogis this year! Luckily, we have child watch at the studio so the girls love to go and play with the other kids while we’re teaching.

After yoga, we headed over to SouthPark mall for lunch and shopping. I wanted to let the girls pick out a Thanksgiving outfit and a couple new school outfits. Mall food courts + kids are the best because they could have Chick-Fil-A…

And I had a soup and salad from Panera. Their Autumn soup is SO good! The girls were so cute, all week long they kept saying that I needed to “eat healthy for the baby” whenever I would eat or order a salad. Haha. BTW, they both told me they think it’s a boy. 🙂

The rest of our day was all about Thanksgiving prep. I did run off around 4 for a FlyWheel class while Tanner took them to the park. That night, BFF Dorie came over for a burger dinner. She has two girls of her own and is so wonderful with children. The girls ate her up and they played for hours.

If you missed my Thanksgiving day recap, you can find it here! I’ll fast forward to the day after!

Our day started back at the studio because I had to teach at 9:30a. After class, we met up with Tanner’s dad and step-mom for lunch at Namastay Kitchen. I was late to join everyone and found that Jaidyn had ordered the chicken sandwich special. This thing was huge and she had no problem finishing it!

Kilynn had chicken fingers and I had my usual salad with a beet burger.

The rest of our day was spent at the toy store, hanging out at home and we went to see the movie Coco, which was really good but had 40 minutes of previews and a mini Elsa film before it even started!

Back at home we ordered pizza. I wasn’t ready to face the Thanksgiving leftovers and thought the girls would like this better. 🙂

Saturday morning was our last morning together. Jaidyn requested a “toad in the hole.”

And Kilynn wanted pancakes which I decided to make into a Minnie Mouse shape and she informed me it had to have a bow! 🙂

I taught another class while the girls did a kid’s yoga class and then we all met up with Tanner for one last lunch before I drove them back to Georgia. Not going to lie, it was a very emotional trip back for me. I’m really grateful for the time that I get to spend with them and to have this piece of my brother. It’s such a gift but more than anything I wish he was here for all of this.

I arrived home around  8p.m. on Saturday night to a clean house and my pj’s laid out on the bed. I heated up a plate of leftovers and hung out with Tanner on the couch.

Sunday was just getting back in the groove. I slept in, made brunch, took the girls for a long walk and taught a couple of classes.

We decorated our tree and the house last night and I’m enjoying sitting next to the tree while I enjoy breakfast and blogging this morning. I’m off to the studio to teach yoga and strength here in a few minutes.

Before I sign off, I decided to extend the Erin McDermott jewelry one more day for those of you who might have missed it last week. You have until midnight tonight to enter and don’t forget you can use code PBR at checkout for 25% off your entire order.

What did you eat the day after Thanksgiving? Did you dive into leftovers or need a break? 

Did you see any movies over the Thanksgiving week? I really want to see Daddy’s Home 2 and Bad Moms Christmas.

Is your tree up yet!?