A Texas Thanksgiving

This year was going to be our own year to make traditions for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. But after awhile the thought of not seeing family for that long was depressing. Our brother and sister in law in Texas thought so too and invited us to come be with them! We left a little bit earlier in the week so we could stop in Houston first to see my Aunt and her fun family.

{Watching a movie drinking "his" root beer. Hey, after 14 hours of driving, whatever keeps you happy kid.}

The thought of a 16 hour drive to Houston made me not so happy, but in all honesty I'd do it again! We left around 5:30pm and drove through the night. The kids went to sleep around 9pm and slept until about 6am which isn't bad for the car! We pulled in to my aunts house around 10am and were SO glad to be out of the car and welcomed with open arms....and humidity!

Isaac loved having someone to play with ALL the time. Aunt Laurie loved on him, and so did our teenage cousins!

They live less than a mile from the Houston temple, and after eating some dang good Tex-Mex we went to walk around the grounds. Beautiful!


Isaac still prays for us to go to Aunt Laurie's house, and I secretly wish we could too!

After a couple night stay (as if we hadn't had enough driving) we moseyed on over to Round Rock to visit the Texas Birds. While they were in school our little family took an adventure down to San Antonia to do some touristy things. Saw the San Antonio temple (even though the grounds were closed). Check. Did the river walk (and wanted to throw Isaac in...) Check. Went to the Alamo. Check. Though I still couldn't tell you what happened there because if we're being truly honest here it was an in, out, go-to-say-you-saw-it, kids-are-being-really-grumpy kind of trip. But fun nonetheless.


Cory and I will both tell you that this next part is probably one of the top 5 of our trip. Seriously. On our way home we all met up at a place called Rudy's for some good ol' Texas bbq. My mouth is watering right this very second. Mmm it was SOOO tasty!

On turkey day I'm sure all our husbands felt kind of like they were single dads. Amy's cute neighbors came and we wives so busy baking and getting things all fancied up that we pretty much ignored the kids. It was kind of nice I'll admit! The guys got their craft on making weaved place mats, and turkeys out of apples. Oh, and folding napkins. But sadly, the pictures are on my sister in laws camera which means you don't get to see their mad concentration and skill. Next time...



{It was worth ignoring the kids, right?!}


And after all this running around do you think we sat still for another minute? Absolutely not! Our black friday shopping started at 6:30pm that night and went all the way until 6:30am the next day. It was my first black Friday and you can guarantee it won't be the last!

I kept teasing Amy that Texas doesn't get cold and that they're all a bunch of babies. But as my luck would have it, while we waited in line for 2 hours at Toys R Us the temp. was in the 20's. And me with my t-shirt and thin hoodie never spoke an evil word again!

"No Uncle Cory, don't go!!"

We were SO sad to leave and probably could have been perfectly content to stay another week (especially knowing there was another 15 hour drive ahead of us!)