Several of my friends went shopping at 2:30 in the morning on “Black Friday,” supposedly the best shopping day of the year. Jason and I opted for sleeping in instead and going for a hike a little later in the day.

We went to beautiful Red Rock Canyon and hiked a rugged 5 mile trail with a couple of friends of ours. We’ve decided this will be our day after Thanksgiving tradition, so we’ve coined the term, “Hike Friday”!

Our family’s annual Thanksgiving tradition is to run a 5K in the morning followed by Turkey for breakfast as a reward to all of the race participants. We’ve done this for about 7 years in a row now and our group keeps getting larger including grandparents and siblings.  The dog even ran it!

My oldest son ran his best time ever while I ran with my younger son as we all tried to hurry as fast as we could to get out of the cold! Jason pushed our daughter in a jogging stroller, but she says she wants to run it herself next year! We loved the fact that we burned off plenty of calories so that we can indulge in our Thanksgiving feast later today.

Here’s a picture of the whole family after the race, trying to smile for the cameras while wanting to get out of the cold and back into our warm cars: