A Family Tradition

A Martin family tradition has always been to go out the day after Thanksgiving and shop for some bargains. Here is how it goes: My dad gets a newspaper for each family that has Thanksgiving with us. We each go through our papers, cutting coupons and writing down the places we want to go and the times they open/are having their sales, and the particular item we are hoping to purchase at that store. In years past, we've had bigger items on the list: those that necessitate getting up insanely early in order to get one before everyone else. (My brother-in-law actually stayed up all night waiting in line for a laptop a few years ago.) This year, Dougle and I had no particular 'big' item we wanted to purchase. This means: no super early mornings. We still woke up at 7am, but didn't arrive at the stores until closer to 8:00am (it takes so much longer getting ready with a child)! We hit several sales before they ended, got several good deals, and went home exhausted and happy. To me, this is so much fun! There is so many good memories that are brought up when we participate in this holiday tradition: we've waited in lines trying to be one of the first hundred who enter and get a prise or gift card, we've frozen our little noses getting out earlier than we ever have so far that winter, and we've made memories splitting up with different parents and shopping for the other parent/sibling (we always bought TONS more stuff when we went with mom than when we went out with dad....ummm)! It is wonderful. I doubt they have "Day After Thanksgiving" sales in Russia (no Thanksgiving in November there), but maybe, just for tradition's sake, we'll hit a few stores early in the morning and conjure up all those happy thoughts and memories!

Thanksgiving

Well, it has been over a week since Thanksgiving, but I thought I'd go ahead and post. We had a wonderful holiday. Holidays are so much fun for me. They signify a time of family, friends, food, and fun (games). From Halloween until New Years, it seems like one holiday after another is thrown at you. It is great. But then I am always ready for normalcy when it is all over. But thats okay, because it will be a while again (10 months) before the partying starts again. Anyway, Thanksgiving was great. We spent it with my family and some regular Thanksgiving guests. This year was a relatively small group, consisting of my family (us 7), Jacob (David's brother), as well as Kathy and Bethany (our 'regulars' who always come for Thanksgiving). Rob, Denyce and Malachi dropped in for a bit too, but only snacked; they had a family meal scheduled for later that afternoon. We had a scrumptious meal, games, some football (a new addition since Dougle was added to the family), and a movie (we re-watched Transformers). We even did our regular Thanksgiving activity of scouring the newspaper for the next day's sales. (see next post for details). So, thanksgiving was fun again this year. It was very different than last year. Last year, Canaan was not even a month old. We were all tired from the several times a night feedings with Canaan. I was still trying to figure out the nursing thing (I think Canaan ate more that Thanksgiving than any of us!). Whenever any one had a break from cooking or eating, they were holding Canaan or waiting in line to hold him. And at any time during the day, there were at least 6 people staring at Canaan with loving eyes. This year, we were trying to keep up with the active little boy. Everyone still stared at him with loving eyes; he knew it too, because when he did something cool (like stack his blocks 6 high), he turned around to see if we were watching. What an ornery little boy! So, we are still so very thankful for him this year too. What a blessing this past year has been! God is so good to us! PS. I forgot to mention: we had a White Thanksgiving. We got our first snow of the year on Thanksgiving Day. It came down in thick, beautiful snowflakes.