turkey day 2013

This year, for the first time since the Thanksgiving before we had Britton, the hubs and I packed it all up and went away for Thanksgiving.  Britton was very excited about visiting her cousins, and I was looking forward to everyone being in one place.  A snowstorm threatened our travel plans, but true to local weatherman form, the storm was over-talked and dropped a mere four inches of snow.  A dusting, as far as I'm concerned!  So we loaded up Memaw and PawPaw's new minivan (they lent it to us to make the trip) with the kids, all of Jessica's family's Christmas presents, boxes of clothes to pass down, and everything else you can imagine.

We found that forcing everyone outside helped keep the cabin-fever to a minimum!  Caroline was a huge help with the kids, entertaining them all, letting Britton play with her Barbies and American Girl dolls, and going on countless walks.

This was the first time Jessica's family got to see Barrett.  He was such a good baby, easily adapting to the pack-and-play for sleeping, and playing with all of Jason's toys.

The first time we've ever gotten to take this picture!  All six kids together. And this picture will never be missing a kid, because neither Jessica nor I are adding to this group!

We spent Thursday getting Thanksgiving dinner ready and herding the kids out of the kitchen.  Jessica set up the bouncy house and it entertained Britton and Emily for a while.  Then Garrett took all the mobile kids outside to run out some energy on the playset.

One thing Britton was looking forward to was sleeping with Caroline.  Both Caroline and Britton are "heat-seekers," meaning if they are sleeping near you they will creep towards you in their sleep and curl up right on you.  Caroline's room was serving as the hostel, as not only her and Britton were there, but also Garrett and Cammy!  I snuck a peek in on Thursday morning, and saw these two peas in a pod.  

On Friday Jessica took us all out to a park near town, and we hit the playground and hiking trail.  So often Britton and I go to one of the same two playgrounds, so it was fun to discover a new playground.  Admittedly, I tried out the slides too!

This tree is covered in carvings.  Just amazing.

 After the park, we all warmed up with Starbucks, then headed home for the first of two raucous rounds of Scattergories.  Let me tell you - we always play Scattergories and no, it never gets old!  Especially when you add in Yeunglings and some really inappropriate answers on the answer sheets, but I digress.  This is what holidays are - kids running wild, cousins piled up on an air mattress, family eating together and laughing and everyone losing it over a round of Scattergories!