Thanksgiving Week in Review

Since Tan & Chez (plus C) decided to fly out to Washington for Thanksgiving this year, we decided to make a trip up there at the same time since they live in Florida now and we don't get to see much of them. We decided to take the kids out of school the Monday through Wednesday before Thanksgiving so we could make the most of our 12 hour drive. Our leaving time was a bit up in the air for a little while because I was involved with some rehearsals for the city Christmas program which I was asked to play my flute & piccolo on for a couple of numbers. I managed to get out of our ward YW in Excellence night so I could go to rehearsal that night and then I was able to miss the rehearsal on Saturday so we could leave early in the morning instead of around noon. We ended up leaving Saturday around 7 in the morning and arrived around dinner time. The weather was beautiful for travel and we made good time. We have a DVD player in the car with 4 sets of headphones, so the kids watched movies a good portion of the trip while DH and I listened to a book on CD in the front of the car. It worked out rather nicely and it seemed to make the trip go quicker.

The weather was pretty rainy for the first couple of days and we were all content to just hang out at the house. We went to church on Sunday and DH's Grandma N. was able to come over for dinner afterwards. We had a nice visit with her and she was apparently surprised to find out that Chez and I were both expecting.

On Tuesday we went to OMSI.

And then on Wednesday we went to Fort Vancouver.

S & V & family arrived late on Wednesday night which meant that our family of 6 had to all squeeze in one room for sleeping quarters. The family was all there for Thanksgiving on Thursday except for DH's sister. :( On Friday we went to a production called the Singing Christmas Tree which was a musical production put on by a choir and some featured groups & soloists. The concert was over 2 hours long and I was pleasantly surprised with how well the kids did.

On Saturday we just spent time together as a family at the house - which included watching the BYU vs. U of U game (Yea Cougars!) and a birthday party for cousins B & C. Tan & family left late Saturday night and our family left early Sunday morning.

The weather was quite a bit colder for a drive home but thankfully we had dry roads and mostly clear skies for the majority of the trip. Then it was back to school for the kids bright and early Monday morning.

Overall we had a very enjoyable visit. The food was great, meals were well organized, lots of good company & conversation and the kids had some great times playing with their cousins!

Thankfully for Luke (since there are so many girl cousins around) he found Tan's old Game Boy and we were able to get it to work. Luke spent some of his time away from the girls playing games on it.

Blondie, cousin P & Kitty were sitting around one day telling "jokes" to each other and laughing at them when Luke came over and started tickling them all.

Towards the end of our visit cousin C was starting to do "boy things" with Luke. He would go up to him and almost tackle him and keep throwing all of his weight onto him. It was funny to watch. C also took a great liking to M&M from our first day there. I'm not sure if it was because she was older and he felt safer with her, but he would go up to her and hold her hand to lead her somewhere whenever she was around and he would cry/scream whenever she tried to leave the room.

The kids all enjoyed Grandma's new play houses (although they had some difficulties at times keeping all of the pieces at the table).