Thanksgiving week

We decided about a week before Thanksgiving that we were going to make a trip up to Coeur d'Alene, ID to visit family for the holidays. My oldest brother and his family live there and DH's brother and family live just next door in Cheney, WA. DH's brother was going to be baptizing his oldest daughter the Saturday following Thanksgiving so we stayed with my brother and had Thanksgiving with them and then spent Saturday and part of Friday with DH's family.

My parents also decided to tag along with us so we caravanned up together and all stayed at my brother's. We left on Wednesday and the drive took us a little over 10 hours (which is making some great time!) and we ended up getting up there around 4 in the afternoon. The kids had a BLAST playing with all of their cousins for the few days we were together. My brother has 2 boys that are M&M and Luke's ages and my brother-in-law has 3 girls that are in-between our kids' ages (and then a baby boy). We were also able to see my younger brother and his wife and little boy - he's such a cutie!

We were glad that we were able to be there for the baptism and we spent some time with DH's parents also who were in town for the even too. The unfortunate part about our trip was that DH ended up getting sick the day after we got there (Thanksgiving) and stayed sick the the whole visit. Then on Saturday when we were leaving my brother-in-law's house I twisted my ankle coming down the stairs and was in a lot of pain for the next couple of days. It swelled up pretty nicely and I had to hobble around the rest of our trip. We drove to downtown Coeur d'Alene Sunday evening and looked at a few of the light displays along the lake but because of my condition and DH still being sick we didn't stay too long.

We drove back home Monday morning and made good time again. Kitty threw up twice in the car on the way home but was fine the next day and no one else got sick. When we finally pulled in our garage we discovered that our smoke alarms were going off inside the house. DH and I quickly ran in and searched all through the house and couldn't find anything wrong. It took us a while to turn them all off but we were finally able to bring the kids in the house and start unloading the car. We have no idea how long the alarms had been going off and what set them off - possibly just some dust that got into one of the alarms. It was nice to get home, but the kids had a hard time going back to school the next day. DH is still recovering from his cold/sinus infection and I am still limping slightly from my injury...

Thanks to everyone for feeding and housing our family! We know that it is not an easy task with a family of seven!! We were also grateful that we had good traveling conditions for both of our days of travel. I understand that the road can be quite treacherous in the wintertime.

This is the only picture I got with both of them looking at the camera!!
Three goofy girls!
M&M and Luke were introduced to the game of Clue by their cousins and had a blast playing it.
M&M looks like she's ready to accuse here...