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We've only ever had "Friendsgiving" once in the 16 years Skott and I have been married and {dare I say it} the 22 years we've been together? Normally we are celebrating Thanksgiving with our families sometimes all together and sometimes bouncing from house to house.
Our very first Friendsgiving was in 2018, we celebrated Thanksgiving Day with our very dear friends {who are now more family than friends} our very first "real" friends after moving to San Diego. It was an easy, no pressure Thanksgiving and a great reminder of how blessed we are to have some amazing friends.
Below are some pictures of our Friendsgiving tablescape. Each adult had a mini live olive tree on their plate. I ordered these fun plants from Eastern Leaf. The kiddos had word finds {printable below} with some cute rustic pencils that I found on Amazon.
I know many Friendsgivings tend to be held before Thanksgiving Day, in order to enjoy the best of both worlds; friends, family, and Thanksgiving Dinner two times! This is something I'd love to do, maybe next year when we are allowed to have more than three families under our roof in California {ugh}. This is just one of the many reasons we are getting out of dodge this Thanksgiving. We are packing up and headed to Red Lodge, Montana with three other families to celebrate Thanksgiving and we couldn't be happier! The men and young men will hunt and the women and young women will...well I don't know what we will do maybe just relax, shoot some guns, shop, bake, hike ... ohhhh the opportunities are endless!
Planning a Thanksgiving Dinner for 17 is hard enough now let's add traveling to another state with multiple families on top of that. Here are three things that I've realized during this whole process.
Utilize each other's strengths, we all have them. My girl Natalie is a master planner and more specifically a master at menu planning. A couple of weeks, she had us on a zoom call talking through the week and had a google doc all set up with Thanksgiving Dinner menu options for us all to sign up for and a night each family was taking on for group dinners. BAM! I'll be there ahead of her and I will take on the shopping.
Don't be too tied to specifics plans, be flexible. I think all of the plans, since the day we planned the Hunt Week / Friendsgiving Week has changed at least 10 times. Whether it was flight changes, arrival and departures changes, driving vs flying, school schedules, soccer schedules, or lodging changes {most of this happening within the last few weeks}. At the end of the day, we are going to be celebrating and enjoying some much-needed downtime with friends who mean the world to us.
It truly does take a village and that's what friends are for. I need to back up for one minute, all of us families were brought together by one thing...soccer. Our boys, while no longer all playing for the same club all met and played together at one point. It's through this where we became friends who like to have fun together but also would be there in a heartbeat if we needed one another. So, when two of the families learned that their sons were finally going to be able to play soccer competitively {California hasn't allowed youth sports due to COVID} it kind of put a wrench in the travel schedules {Day after Thanksgiving tournament in Arizonia}...great for the boys and the parents who are dying to see them compete again but not so great for the little sisters who really don't want to travel to another state to watch big brother play in a soccer tournament and not to mention the added expense on the pocketbook. Enter me, I will be chaperoning five young ladies home from Montana so our friends can enjoy watching their boys do what they love.
I can't wait to land in Montana, unwind a little bit and get back to nature. I'm sure I'll be posting while there so head on over to my Instagram page and follow along!
Wishing you all a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving from our family to yours!