#TBT - thanksgiving in SoCal.

It's been over 2 month since Thanksgiving and I'm barely getting to my recap post now. So let's just go ahead and call this a #TBT and pretend it was on purpose.

You'd think recap posts would be easier since I don't have to be creative and am literally just recapping what I did, but I find them a little harder to do in a decent time frame. So while this is no longer relevant, I have to put all these pictures I forced people to take to good use.

The fun thing about having Thanksgiving in SoCal and Christmas up here in the Bay is that we end up celebrating Christmas twice! And seriously, who doesn't love Christmas TWICE?!

My mom has a thing for family party themes. While my sister suggested we go with a Thanksgiving theme (i.e. dress as people celebrating Thanksgiving), my mother took it literally and thought we should all be Pilgrim and "Indians." Since we didn't really want to do that either, we went along with a Filipino theme. So we all wore barong-ish clothes and had a Filipino feast. YUM!

For the ever growing population of kiddos at the party, we decided to have a PABITIN (aka a Filipino Pinata). Needless to say, they went absolutely bonkers. Free toys that are literally up for grabs.

Then the rest of the trip is what Christmas should be: decorating the tree in pajamas, too much food, kids chasing each other around your feet, crumpled wrapping paper piles, nostalgia, family games, and laughing.

As I get older, I see me nieces and nephews get bigger, and it's a total trip. It's one thing for there to be a lot of babies in the family, but now we have a bunch of KIDS!  

Getting older is no fun, in my opinion. But being able to watch these young'ns develop and grow in front of me is priceless. I'm just waiting for the day where I'm that person that goes "I remember you when you were THIS big and I used to change your diapers!"

Oof.