Day After Thanksgiving + Hanukkah

The days after Thanksgiving kick off the Christmas season, not just for my family, but for the entire nation. Only, instead of us shopping those days that follow a day of eating and drinking, we spend time with each other relaxing, decorating for the holidays, and eating some more. 

In the morning while my aunt and uncle prepped their house for decorating, I kept my two little cousins busy by teaching them how to use their sewing machine. With a little guidance, the older of my two cousins was able to hem a dress into a shirt, and shorten  long sleeves into short sleeves. She did pretty well, and with the clear elastic thread instead of a colored thread, the shortened sleeves looked great! 

Later in the day, my grandparents brought over the leftover Thanksgiving feast, and we all started decorating my aunt and uncle's tree. We started with a Christmas album of the same songs I used to listen to growing up when decorating the tree. And then, because my uncle is a lover of music, we switched to some more contemporary music, what my little cousin calls rock 'n roll. 

My camera battery started to get low, so instead of my littlest cousin playing around on my camera, she took a try at my other cousins camera. She's pretty great; she captured some lovely portraits of her grandfather and our grandfather on Thanksgiving day with my camera. 

My camera battery was draining quickly because I was filming a lot of the evening and I forgot to pack my charger. S suggested that I should make a little film of Thanksgiving. We each have VHS tapes that our parents filmed of our family get-togethers and holidays from when we were young and sometimes not even born. I love capturing our families and friends in photos with great portraits, but I really love making little films, capturing small moments and personality quirks. 

At S's grandparents house, we had Hanukkah dinner on Saturday night since Hanukkah fell over Thanksgiving this year. S was ordered to make the latkes. We enjoyed brisket with his mom, grandparents, and brother, and all lit the candles together. I have to say it was quite nice to have Hanukkah overlap with Thanksgiving this year - I much prefer it than when it overlaps Christmas. Although, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I don't mind sharing it with Hanukkah. It's Christmas that's second-best to me and yet there's still something about it that I want all to myself and not to share the day with Hanukkah. That could be the little kid in me.