thanksgiving

Jeff reading to the Laura and Katie, he read all three stories!

We were brave letting Cheyenne go on the go cart all around the golf course with her crazy-speedster cousin, Audrey and Sarah!

Beautiful girls! Sarah, Cheyenne and Audrey

Our family on the Pontoon!

Audrey, Katie, Grandma Sylvia, Ansley, & Sarah

Aaron and Austin, the Captains!

Jeff tubing in November!!

Sarah and Audrey... they got tipped the first minute and wouldn't go back in!

Mom & I... we were smart and waited to go last so we figured out how to not get pulled under!

Sarah, Mom, and Cheyenne

Cheyenne with Grandma Sylvia & Grandpa Steve

 Katie, Ansley, Cheyenne & Berkeley after their bath

The girls couldn't see the DVD player because of the sun so we made them these little tunnels out of their blankets and they LOVED it! They watched Tom & Jerry wizard of Oz about 3 times, then we stopped by a redbox and rented Puss in Boots for them.

After the Turkey Bowl, I made a turkey cheeseball inspired from Pinterest... it didn't last long!

Close up of the Turkey

Thank you to Jeff for my favorite picture of the trip! All the cousins except poor Austin who was a little out numbered by all the girls! Cheyenne, Katie, Laura, Berkeley, Ansley, Sarah, Megan and Audrey. Eating sausages and turkey cheeseball!

Jeff and Bruce hard at work with the potatoes

The new room Aaron just added to his house. He hadn't bought the ping pong table yet, so this was the perfect place for the giant Thanksgiving table!

 

Ansley, Cheyenne and Katie sat at this little table:)

I can't believe I haven't done this blog post yet!!!! This trip was SO MUCH FUN! I am so glad everything worked out and last minute we were able to go! Jeff's football team had an unexpected turn of events at the end of the season with key players getting injured and not playing their best, so even though we only lost to the eventual state champions at the beginning of the season by one touchdown, we ended up not even going to state! Since football was over, and there were no games scheduled for basketball, we were able to go to my brother's house in Florida. My Mom and Steve came to our house on Saturday and hung out with us and went to church with us Sunday and then they were SO nice to take the girls with them on Monday. It was really nice to have half of Monday, all Tuesday and half of Wednesday without kids, to get stuff done before we left.

We left Wednesday afternoon after Jeff's basketball practice. We of course had to stop by our favorite Red Robin in Alabama on the way down and it did not disappoint! Since we don't have one close to us, every time we go it is seriously amazing and we savor every bite!

We got to Aaron's house Wednesday night and the girls hadn't even missed us! They were loving playing with their cousins and grandparents! This was almost 2 months ago now, so I am getting details confused. Now I think we actually left Tuesday, but anyway...

On Thanksgiving, Mom, Andrea and Heather did all of the morning work and let me go play Turkey Bowl with the boys! It was fun and competitive. Our team always won thanks to Jeff, except for at one point we started to lose and we realized we had been playing with like 6 less players than the other team for the last half hour! I collided with this guy when trying to catch a pass and my knee hurt for the next month! Also, the next week my entire body was SO SORE!!! I felt like I had been in a car accident or something. Every bone and muscle was hurting! I could literally barely walk. When did I crossover to old person zone?

For Thanksgiving my job was the turkey cheeseball and the ham. I lucked out with the easy jobs:) The dinner was AMAZING and there was seriously SO much food at the house we coudn't even fit it all in the two fridges at Aaron's and Annette's house. 

I can't remember the order we did things, but Aaron had gotten a go-cart since we were there last. And since he lives on an abandoned golf course, we took turns taking it all over the paths. It was seriously awesome. Then he also rented a pontoon and we went out into the gulf and took turns tubing. When we weren't on the boat, they had a playground near the place we got in the water. Heather asked me to show her girls how to do a pullover and back hip circle (a very beginning level gymnastics skill I have been able to do in my sleep since I was probably 7 years old).  I went over to do it and I couldn't even do it. It was probably the most depressing thing I have experienced in my life so far. I tried like 100 times and finally did it in the end, but it was so ugly and sloppy. It is crazy how you lose that muscle memory so quickly. I mean even though it has  been probably 5 or 6 years since I ever attempted it, it is just something I always thought I would be able to do. I just thought people got out of shape and lazy and that is why they couldn't do things they could do when they were younger, but apparently there is more to it than that, because I still workout like crazy and lift a ton of weights and consider myself in as good of shape as I was 6 or 7 years ago when I did it no problem. So sad. I have been thinking back on that day often these last few months and every time I think of it it makes me sad... oh well, next stage of my life I guess...

Thanksgiving night Aaron and Steve drove 2 hours away to some store in Alabama to get a Black Friday deal on a really nice ping pong table for Aaron's new game room they built on to their house. Andrea, Mom, Heather & I left Bruce and Jeff with the kids (who were about to go to bed), and headed to Wal-Mart to see if we could snag some of their deals. Holy cow that was a mistake! First of all I have never seen anything like that in my life and I was a little in shock. If you went to the back of the store, you couldn't even walk seriously like you couldn't move. I decided to wait by a stack of portable DVD players that were about to be on sale in a couple of hours. I was one of the first 5 or 6 people there. 

As the time got closer and closer so many people were crowded around me, I started to become concerned for my safety! Some people started to take them out before the time came and they must have had cameras or something because within about 15 seconds security was out there and of course the guy who was going to cut open the boxes came and stood right in front of me! Seriously? My heart was pounding and I was so nervous and people had this weird look in their eyes... without warning, he just took his little box cutter and sliced open the plastic and everyone pounced! I dropped to my knees and grabbed one for Heather and I from the bottom, then there were people pushing me from all over, and some lady got pushed down. I clutched on to my dvd players for about 5-10 seconds, then I remembered I told the guy behind me I would try to get him one, so I grabbed one for him and I felt really good about myself because he had been there almost as long as me and he had been totally crowded out and he wouldn't have gotten one otherwise. Then they were all gone and it was over. My mom and sisters were watching the whole thing and they said the entire thing only lasted about 30 seconds. It was definitely not the Thanksgiving or Christmas spirit that was at Wal-Mart, but the materialistic hoarding spirit! I lost a lot of respect for Wal-Mart because that was so unsafe and they set it up that way knowingly. I will never do that again, but on the plus side we got our $49 dual screen dvd players! We used them on the trip home and Cheyenne was so excited running around telling everyone, "We have tvs in our car! We have tvs in our car!!!" 

That night we also drove to Target which was like 45 minutes away and I got the girls their matching Rapunzel and Cinderella dolls and dresses for only $20 each. 

We also had an awesome family ping pong tournament that was so fun! Jeff beat my mom for the championship, which is great because no one ever beats my mom! Jeff played a couple of games and was playing alright, then all of the sudden I think when he was playing me, he just like came on fire and was smashing everything and like got ten times better in one game then I have ever seen him play! I guess not everyone gets worse at sports when they get older, obviously! I am sure Aaron will be practicing for our next trip up so we will all have to duke it out again:)

My little nephew, Austin, also got baptized while we were there which was great. He wanted Jeff to give his talk on the Holy Ghost. Jeff did a great job and we are so proud of Austin and what a good boy he is and what a great example he is to Cheyenne and Berkeley. He is always so sweet with Cheyenne and will play with her, I just love him.

I think that is most of the highlights of our trip. I think we all had a great time and none of us wanted it to be over. It was so great that my sister and her family could make the drive down from Kansas since we barely ever get to see them. Hopefully we can make another family get together sometime soon:)