Our Family's Thanksgiving 2015

Good Morning all my fellow booklovers, and a happy belated Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians :)

I had mentioned in a previous post that my family was planning on doing something special for this year's Thanksgiving, something a lot different than we usually do. My mom and I are both big on homemade type of people, holidays almost always consist of a big family gathering, an amazing home cooked meal, and spending lots of quality time together.

This year however, we decided to do things a little different. My mom and my stepdad went on a big trip this fall, leaving our hometown on September 3rd, and not arriving home until early October. With them being gone, and my hubby and I only moving into our house at the beginning of September, we knew Thanksgiving might be done a little differently.

My brothers happened to find information in August about an event being offered a couple of hours from our hometown that included an old fashioned train ride, followed by a traditional thanksgiving dinner, and then another train ride back to the station. We were all extremely excited by the prospect of this, and decided to forego our usual traditions and take part in this instead. Unfortunately it was not the most pleasant of experiences as the day of the event ended up being horrible weather wise, with a windstorm that had winds gusting to almost 100 km an hour, extremely below average temperatures, and lots of rain that almost turned into snow as the temperatures kept dropping. As the company sponsoring this event does not usually run in this type of weather, they were extremely unprepared, and everyone ended up freezing on the train ride, and basically just wanting the dinner to be over with so we could begin  the drive back home. Would I say we'd never do this type of event again? No, I would definitely not say that. We would however save it for a summer event, and stick with our traditional Thanksgiving plans. We all ended up feeling so disappointed that we decided to go ahead and do our own dinner anyways. Oh well I guess you live and you learn through every experience.

I would not however, take this day back for anything as it allowed all my family and I to have some quality time together, and despite it not going as planned, i'm still excited to share a few of the details with you. Unfortunately, my pictures did not turn out as well as I had hoped thanks to the weather conditions, but I'm going to go ahead and share them anyways.

 

Our Day Started out with a three hour road trip. We decided to all go in two vehicles, instead of each taking our own, and my hubby and I ended up travelling with my mom, stepdad, and my nephew. While my brothers went with my dad and stepmom. I love the fact that despite my parents being divorced, and both happily with other people, we still often due things like this as a big group.

 

My hubby settled into the back seat with The Warrior Heir by Cinda Williams Chima. I curled up with Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch which I am loving, and will hopefully be reviewing soon. You can see in the background all the movies we brought for my nephew to watch on the dvd player in my mom's van.

This particular part of the drive was so crazy. We drove right through a giant dust storm like nothing I'd ever seen before.

This part of the drive we actually saw several dirt and gravel roads that had been washed out by the giant waves coming off the water.

We stopped along the way for coffees. I was a happy girl sipping on my London Fog, since, blasphemous I know, I'm not actually a fan of the taste of any kind of coffee.

 

We also passed the time by watching a couple of movies. My nephew picked Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And as you can see, that's what we're watching here.

This was pretty much my only picture that turned out from the train ride, but I absolutely love it. My nephew spent pretty much the whole ride exactly like this. He was so fascinated by what was going on, he stayed glued to this spot, and eventually ended up falling asleep :)

 

This is my final picture of our day. I had planned to take some fashion pictures for my blog while we at the train, but with the weather being as awful as it was, it just wasn't possible. I still really wanted to share this outfit however, as I was quite happy with how it all went together, so I just got my hubby to snap a couple of quick shots when we got home. Please ignore the sunglasses, my eyes were too bloodshot after travelling in the awful weather all day to be in a picture, so I went with the sunglasses instead. I also had on booties for the day, but forgot to put them back on for the picture.

This http://www.eclipsestores.com/4530-super-soft-3-4-sleeve-dress-0827.aspx is the dress i'm wearing, and I bought it especially for this day. It was so soft and warm, and was a great choice for the awful weather, and a pretty good deal for the price.

 

These http://www.eclipsestores.com/1663-tattoo-seriously-slimming-ponte-pant-0069.aspx are the pants I'm wearing with the dress. They feel just as comfortable as leggings, but looked a little dressier to wear for something like this.

 

And my scarf, http://www.eclipsestores.com/4813-plaid-blanket-scarf-0397.aspx, is my current obsession and I've been wearing it all the time lately, especially on these cold, fall days.

 

My necklace doesn't show up that great in the picture, but it's from Maurices, and is unfortunately no longer available.

 

Thanks for reading everybody :) And I'll be back with some book reviews later this week.

 

Note: This is not a sponsored post. Everything showed in this video was purchased by me or my family, and all opinions are my own.