Thanksgiving & Tonsager 60th Anniversary 2013

Macy's Parade

Shannon, our friend & Jake's daycare providers is a die hard Steelers fan!

This year Wayne's Grandparents were celebrating their 60th anniversary over Thanksgiving Break in Sioux Falls. We all headed that way for Thanksgiving dinner and a fun hotel weekend. We were the only of the West River crew to head out Wednesday after school. We stayed at Karl's in Harrisburg. 

scenes of East River South Dakota 

Hold your breath over the river!!!!!

We had Thanksgiving Dinner with the Feterl's at Kevin & Jan's, one of the most elegant & scrumptious spreads I have had for a family dinner. It was fun to see everyone & get a little Feterl time in!

Jake's new best friend, Uncle Kevin

After dinner the uncles played games with the boys..........

Kochie Man & Andy playing chess

zach & luke on the elliptical

trophy room

Zach found pictionary man

Luke building with dominoes

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Andy found another favorite game & suckered Kochie man in....Monopoly!

The Feterl / Koch women get together every fall and make Christmas projects to hand out to the family. (I miss my family doing these type of things & wish we lived closer to either side.)  This year they made monogram Santa door hangers! 

Once November hits, you better have your holiday game on. The stores are dumping their Halloween merchandise, there's an end cap with Thanksgiving decor and Christmas shit has taken over the rest of the space.

A tradition of my family for longer than I have been around has been to go Black Friday shopping, a term I had never heard of until I met my husband in 2003. I doubt he said it first, but by 2008 it was a common name for the event.









I can remember my mom taking my sister and I with at 5am, grabbing my aunt and grandma, and heading to Kearney 35 miles away to get in line before 6 (when ALL the stores USED TO open). Sometimes we stayed behind with dad and went to Grandpa & Grandma Walker's to play with our cousins all day, but by the time we were of age to figure out the 50-75% savings, we were hooked. We collected Mickey Mouse snow globes from JC Penny's (most of which my boys have smashed- some over each other's heads) and displayed them like trophies of our conquests over the years and ALWAYS had a great time, spending way too much money, as much as we would have spent by going on any regular full price day, but with 25-50% more crap to show for it.

This was a #1 item for the boys this year.
The latest Imaginext Batcave. 

This has become a necessity for me as an adult with 5 children of my own, 4 nieces & nephews, a baby brother & parents & siblings to buy for. Also, it's the ONLY DAY OF THE YEAR when I can set out, kid free and head to more than 2 stores that are mostly necessity and actually SHOP for fun and for me. There are so many haters out there on the situation, and I can contribute to wishing it would go back to FRIDAY. 6am FRIDAY was plenty good enough and enough time for all and no one had to leave after Thanksgiving dinner. Although I do agree that Thanksgiving is a meal not an entire weekend so plan accordingly.

I went to ToyRus ONCE. Never Again.
Some stores are worth it, some are not.
ToysRus in RC is NOT. They have a small
Store capacity and you end up wasting precious
shopping time outside waiting to get in the door
they also are good about having their doorbusters
online, while many stores have good sales online
but save doorbusters for in store only.

With that rant spilled out, Wayne and the boys hung out at his uncle Karl's with some of the fam, while his cousin Nichole, her husband Matthew & I headed to the stores with everyone's lists for some shopping.








It was an absolute BLAST! They are my type of laid back, fun loving, out for a good time people. We instantly made a perfect trio & Matthew was the perfect partner in crime for ornery shenanigans. Poor Nichole spent part of the night hiding from us, I'm just sure of it. We were the type to call out noises to find each other, guard our stuff and bark at those who came too close, cheer when the line moved, wear silly hats, talk to loud, sing & run through the isles. We were out for a good time. We even got someone's license renewed, yelled at a closed drive through window, had second breakfast, or was it pre breakfast? Hmmmm, I'll have to think on that....





Then...... then, the event of the night came, or shall I say morning......



We drove back to Harrisburg to Karl's to grab a phone charger, switch out stuff and whatever. Karl really wanted to have us be the first 100 in line at Scheels for a chance at one of their spectacular prizes, so we had driven by numerous times to check the size of their line before heading back to Karl's. There was always 1 or 2 guys there, one on the bench, one at the door. Matthew got a little antsy and decided to stay there in line to make sure he was one of the first few. Off Nichole and I went. We switched out our stuff and thought about taking a nap but thought it would be hard to get moving again, so we headed back to get in line with Matthew. He was VERY happy to see us. As it turns out, Karl had mistaken where the prizes were. They were actually for Cabela's in Mitchell, a couple towns over. WHAT?!?!?!?! How did we miss that? Scheels had a far less impressive ad and a far further out open time. And that guy waiting on the bench....a statue!!!   Bwahahahahahahahahaahah hilarious. So went went for another breakfast.

At one point in Sioux Falls we had free time to kill & a meal to find somewhere to new to try. We asked what the favorite asian food spots were in SiouxFu. We were told repeatedly that Hibachi Grill was a must. It was very pretty and the biggest Chinese buffet we had seen yet!

We LOVE SUSHI!!!!!

Jake about out ate us all. Even at 16#3oz 

Unfortunately Wayne ate something that had been out too long and ended up with food poisoning that night at the hotel. Poor guy. Then while we were recouping and watching Fast & the Furious.... it came on the news that PAUL WALKER died in a car crash. Talk about goose bumps!

The hotel was great with something for everyone! 

The kids loved the water park....

 

It had an in hotel bar (a couple actually) where the ornery ones (who could that have been) went for drinks....

There was also a nice conference/banquette room where we had the anniversary dinner.....

And the wallpaper and decor in the hallway was perfect for family pictures.....

the oldest Tonsager & the youngest (at the time) Tonsager

 4 Generation Tonsagers

Ken's Branch...

  

Kris's Branch...

Karl's Branch....

  

Break it down....

My favorite family photos....

IT was a great trip and unfortunately we have not all been in the same place at the same time since and I fear we won't be until we lose someone. To the memory of the best Thanksgiving!