You may or may not know, but All-Star Real Estate is a family owned and operated company. Our company was started by my dad, Steve White, in the 1970’s. My mom, Patti, joined the company when her and dad got married in 1986 and I (April) l followed in their footsteps in 2009. If you want all the details, head over to our ABOUT US page to fill in the blanks 🙂 As a result, we celebrate Thanksgiving together each and every year, LOL!
Growing up, my early memories are of us spending Thanksgiving at our house with my Grandma, Grandpa, and Papa White. After filling our bellies, we would spend quality time together…football, decorating for Christmas, and always going to get a Christmas Tree that afternoon! Also there was my younger sister, Amber. I should have mentioned her earlier. 😉
At some point, when I was in my pre-teen years, we started going out to eat for Thanksgiving. For you old school Anderson folks, Morrison’s Cafe was our destination of choice! Once an adult, my sister moved to Myrtle Beach and I got married, so the going out to eat tradition continued in Myrtle Beach for a few years, but with not only the four of us, but my husband, his girls (our girls!) and his mom. When Amber moved back to Greenville, so did our family Thanksgiving dinners. You’ll notice that even our Thanksgiving pictures have traditions 🙂
All-Star Family Thanksgiving
Since then, my sister has gotten married and had a daughter. Now, the ten of us go out to eat each and every year (except last year…long story short, we’re back to eating out again this year, haha!). We are there when the doors open and once we gobble ’til we wobble, we head to the Christmas Tree lot and pick out a tree for my and my sister’s house, as a family of ten! Once the perfect trees have been chosen, we go back to one of our houses, change into our Christmas pajamas and take our Christmas pictures.
You read that right…we take Christmas pictures on Thanksgiving! Every single year for at least the last 13 years, we have had matching Christmas pajamas and we take a family picture. Christmas is crazy, so we started taking advantage of the down time on Thanksgiving to git ‘er done! Here are some fun pics from over the years.
All-Star Family Christmas Pictures
Once pictures are done, it’s time to plan our big Black Friday Shopping Trip. We sit around and go through the newspaper…YES, THE NEWSPAPER…and cut out coupons. We all know that we can get coupons online, but it’s tradition! Black Friday is fun too. Most years it’s Me, Mom, Dad, my girls, Hannah & Katy, and Amber that hit the mall at 6am. We don’t go for the sales. Heck, we can get those sales online while sitting in our pj’s at home, but then we would miss out on this special family time. We try to document the day…take a look at our shopping adventures over the years.
Black Friday Adventures
We typically go our separate ways on Saturday and Sunday, but that Thursday and Friday are two of my most favorite days of the year. Growing up, Thanksgiving was always the precursor to Christmas. As an adult, now that all of my grandparents have passed away, I appreciate those precious two days, not as a sign that the Christmas season is beginning, but as family time that I better take advantage of now (no matter how bad I want to sleep in on Black Friday!), because it won’t be there forever.
So from the All-Star Family to yours, HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!
PS. Black Friday Secret: since stores started opening on Thanksgiving night, the morning of Black Friday is a breeze until about noon!
