Thanksgiving Adventures

So sorry for the delay in posting! Things have been very busy at work, what with it being online advertising and this being the biggest shopping time of the year. So leading up to Thanksgiving I was working late and had almost no time to blog, sorry!

I've had a draft of a more philosophical blog in here for about 2 weeks, but alas, it will have to wait because now I have real updates to provide! Taylor and I got back last night from spending Thanksgiving weekend in Ohio with my family. We had a great time!

We left the city on Tuesday night and went to Taylor's house. His brother and his wife came in to town Tuesday night so we got to spend some time with them. On Wednesday, I stayed out in New Jersey and did some work and Taylor actually went back into the city to work for a few hours. We got on the road at about 3:20pm to make the 9-hour drive to Toledo.

We actually hit traffic in New Jersey and only went about 70 miles in the first 2 hours on the road. Not fun! But, the drive wasn't too bad after that and we made it to my house at about 1:30am on Wednesday night.

Thursday, of course, was Thanksgiving. We slept in and then ran some errands before my grandma and grandpa and some of our family friends came over for Thanksgiving dinner (my Grandma Lucyk was already there). We had a wonderful time with all of our family and friends eating a delicious meal and hanging out. I think Taylor has finally gotten more comfortable around my family (to the point that he was holding guns and making jokes, what a good husband!).

Another notable part of Thursday was that everyone drank A LOT! We went through multiple bottles of wine, 2 full bottles of Crown and many beers between 13 people over the course of the day. Which made it even more fun when we played Apples to Apples and Euchre :) Thursday night ended with us watching the Giants lose to the Broncos and going to bed at around 11:30pm.

I got up at 4:30am on Friday to go shopping with my mom and Grandma. Say what you want about going out shopping this early on Black Friday. I'm not one of those crazy shoppers, but there are definitely deals to be had if you can find them! I got a digital camera for Taylor and I for $130, a wireless printer for $75, and a TomTom XL for my parents for just $98! Not bad! I also got an amazing new winter coat for $80 at Macys and a few different 8GB storate devices for just $14.99. After 6 hours of shopping, I was tuckered out and my mom brought me home to nap before the annual Perrysburg alumni flag football game!

This year was fairly small (there were only 9 people there), but we actually snuck into the new football stadium where they have turf,it was a lot of fun! I don't know if you know this, but the turf is basically the fake grass with tons of little tiny pieces of black rubber all sprinkled in it. So when the ball hits the turf, all this black sandy stuff flies up. Taylor, Garett and I were all on the same team and sadly we lost, but it was a good time!

After football we headed home to shower before going to dinner at my favorite little Mexican place in Perrysburg, El Vacquero (the Cowboy). We ate a yummy dinner and then Taylor, my brother, his girlfriend and I hopped on a bus and went to the Toledo Walleye game in downtown Toledo. Who are the Toledo Walleye, you ask? Why, they are our minor league hockey team of course! That's right, the former Toledo Storm now have a new stadium right in downtown. It's really nice, tickets are just $15, and we had a great time! Plus, there's a bus that's just $2 round trip per person so you don't need to worry about drinking and driving, parking, or even finding your way there. It was fabulous!

Whew, we were busy, huh!?

After the game, we came home and I was about ready to pass out at 10pm (remember I got up at 4:30am, yes, this is all in the same day!). So we watched some TV and went to bed :)

Saturday morning, Taylor and I really needed to do a little Christmas shopping of our own, so we got up at 9am and went to Target. My team at work gave us a $200 gift card to Target, so we decided to use it to buy some gifts for ourselves, our families, and also some donations for a drive my extended family is having to send things to the troops overseas. We bought some dry foods, deoderant, books, etc. for that, too. We were at Target for a couple hours and wouldn't you know it, we spent almost exactly the amount of money on our gift card, $201.87!

As soon as we got home from shopping, we jumped in the car to head to my grandparents house for lunch. I hadn't seen my mom's dad and my grandma in a while, so we wanted to make sure to see them. It's about an hour drive up there, well worth it, though, for Nana's cooking! She made a DELICIOUS brunch and we played a game of Hand and Foot before hurrying back to pick up my ring, which Taylor had dropped off to be welded together the day before. Now, I just have one wedding ring that is both my engagement ring and my band.

Whew, you still reading? This is probably boring! ANYWAY, almost done. On Saturday evening, we went to the tree-lighting event in our town. It's actually in this "fake" downtown area which is a new development of stores, restaurants, bars, etc., but it's made to look like a downtown. There's a big tree in the center and they had a nice little show with dancing and singing before the lit the tree. My sisters good friend Katie was actually the main singer, so it was nice to see her sing.

After the tree lighting, we headed home to exchange early Christmas gifts among our family. My mom, as always, got Taylor and I some very thoughtful, useful, and generous gifts (thanks, Mom!). We played a game of Taboo before heading to bed to get a good night sleep before our long drive on Sunday!

On Sunday, we got up and went to church and then hit the road at about 12:30 to head back to Jersey. We ended up getting to our apartment at about 10:30pm, tired!