Cowboy Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving I planned on having a quiet, low-key dinner after moving and trying to set up our new house, but when Mike found out everyone he worked with would be gone all week, we decided to take a trip. My grandma had invited us for Thanksgiving, so we checked last minute to make sure it was okay that we came and we packed up and took off. My cousin was super nice and let us stay overnight with her to break up the trip, which is a good thing, because the 13 hour drive turned into a 18 1/2 hour drive thanks to two car accidents and traffic. We got to see a couple of my brothers, a sister-in-law, and my mom and a fair bit of extended family, which was nice. My grandma even made twice-baked potatoes, a little tradition I have with her--she made them for me every Thanksgiving while I was in college.

The boys were in heaven--their dad took almost an entire week off, they had attention galore from multiple uncles, and they found out my grandpa was a cowboy. (They are obsessed with cowboys right now. Michelle and Brayden sing "Cowboy take me away" together.) Grandpa even let them use one of his cowboy hats to play with. An uncle of mine took them all shooting. I watched from the car. And they got to go fourwheeling. Brayden is old enough to be cautious, but Caleb isn't and he kept egging my brother on, trying to get him to go up steeper and steeper mountains and to go faster and faster.

Then even more spur of the moment, my sister-in-law gave Mike her ticket to the U of U vs BYU game and so we extended our driving time and hit up Provo. The boys and Michelle went to the game and the other Michelle and I took the little boys shopping, to see Santa, and to Red Robin. And apparently I totally bummed out my sister-in-law by the size of clothes I had to buy to finish out this pregnancy. Well, what can I say, I always get really big when I'm pregnant. I don't think she'll have my problem since she's 15 weeks and you can't even tell she's pregnant, where as I'm wearing maternity clothes by 15 weeks. So all in all, not a quiet Thanksgiving, but a good one. And I expect Christmas will be the same.