Happy day after thanksgiving everyone! I hope you’re all still in somewhat of a food coma, because that means you had a good dinner. I cooked pancakes for my family this morning, being the awesome daughter that I am, but we barely ate any because we’re still stuffed. Pancakes are one of the many traditions my family has around the Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s a few more:

1. Thanksgiving day exercise: mandatory if we want to be able to eat as much as we want and not feel bad about it. We usually take our two dogs for a walk or go for a run in the morning, followed by a few hours of tennis. This year my brother somehow beat every person in our family, even though he hasn’t touched a racquet in two years and my parents play on league teams. Awkward.

2. Pretending to help mom and dad cook: we ALWAYS say how excited we are to help prepare the Thanksgiving feast, but coincidentally when the time comes we’re either too hungry or too interested in watching them cook to actually help. However, we do take the odd jobs of chopping tomatoes or stirring something—as long as it doesn’t involve too much movement, because we really don’t have any energy after all that exercise and no food since breakfast. But we do still fight over who gets to stir the mashed potatoes with the cool egg beater machine.

3. Arguing over what to wear: This year it was easy because it was just our immediate family (I definitely wore pajamas to the table), but when we’re with friends or more family it’s always a struggle to decide what we can wear that will be generous enough to allow room for ample stomach expansion. My siblings and I aren’t big on dressing up, so we tend to just wait until our mom forces us to put on the normal jeans and a nice shirt before dinner. Ideally, thanksgiving dinner would require everyone to wear sweatpants, but I guess that would ruin some family pictures.

4. Ping pong: I don’t know what it is about that game, but it gets everyone in a great mood at big family events. This year we played it after dinner for a solid two hours while watching football. It’s the perfect post-dinner event: not too much movement, but enough to prevent food coma status, and allows for multitasking to catch some football at the same time.

This was an awesome thanksgiving for my family and me. I’m thankful we got to spend it together, and I hope you all are having a great holiday and enjoying some traditions of your own!

Our lovely dinner (no thanks to the kids)