We were recently in San Diego, California for our family’s Thanksmas celebration. We do Thanksgiving and Christmas every other year, so we call it Thanksmas when we are together to celebrate both holidays. We stayed at the Welk Resort which is north of Escondido. It is a beautiful place!! In 1964 Lawrence Welk, who had a weekly variety show, began developing the property as a get away for his family and friends.

The activity center had a digital scavenger hunt took us to some of the iconic spots of the resort and had us do some fun actions…

We enjoyed the swimming pools, water slides, ping pong, and meeting the Welk Wave

The Welk Resort has two awesome golf courses…part of our group did the par 3 course and had a blast

The resort even has an E-bike tour for only $14.00 a person.

In between activities and visiting sites in San Diego, we had daily activities for our group. We ranged in age from 1 to 60 years old.

All week we did “Thankful” activities…

We had everyone “create” their own Thanksgiving placemat

Even though we were away from home, we had an amazing Thanksgiving dinner complete with appetizers and pies.

As the second part of Thanksmas, we celebrated Christmas!! We started with the nativity, which is a family tradition, ending with the singing of Joy to the World, but the Jeremiah was a bullfrog version…lol

Then it was present time and you have to have Christmas trees to open presents!!

We do a family gift exchange where you can’t spend more than $35.00. There are some very creative gifts.

Our “Great” Aunt Shirley had sent presents as well. She gives awesome clothes!!

Our family has 2 December birthdays, so we celebrated them with a Fiesta party.

We played lots of games…ball of wool, magnets, Moose, Boom Whackers, and Bamboozled and looking for Star leaves with Kaylee.

We had great breakfasts, marshmallow and carmel popcorn, and a finger food buffet.

Our grandson, Wyatt, who lives in Iowa, loves the Los Angeles Rams, so as a surprise, his family attended a game at So-fi stadium and they got on national tv.

While in Los Angeles, we ate breakfast at an amazing restaurant named Tatas.

No matter what we do, it still comes down to being together as a family.