Thanksgiving 2013

What a week!  We have so much to be thankful for... including hosting family for the past several days!  My sister and her family made the epic 14 hour drive from Iowa to come spend Thanksgiving with us.  They endured snow/sleet/rain the entire trip down!  We are so thankful that they came to visit, see our new house and new area, and spent Thanksgiving with us.  We know what a big trip it is and we are so grateful our family loves us enough to do it!

The cousins loved being together and having so many days in a row to play.  We had four full days together and somehow didn't even end up doing all of the things we wanted to.

Atlanta was kind enough to welcome them with the coldest Thanksgiving day in 100 years.  Awesome.  There was even snow in the forecast but praise the Lord, it never did snow.  We had a gorgeous 60 degree day on Friday, though, so playing outside at the parks hopefully made up for the other cold days.

We took them to some of our favorite local places, including the most amazing donut shop followed by Catch Air where the kids had so much fun running around and playing!



The boys also loved the Lego store at our mall!  I'm glad we found some indoor activities to keep us busy on the cold and rainy days!

Thanksgiving morning the girls and I started on my mom's famous homemade crescent rolls bright and early!  We decided to do a mix of making some favorite homemade recipes and utilizing Costco and Honey Baked Ham to provide the rest.  Best.decision.ever.  We still spent plenty of time in the kitchen but also got to relax a little and enjoy hanging out.





Yummy breakfast... cinnamon rolls and coffee!



The kids loved the cinnamon rolls!  We also had the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on for much of the morning.  I just love that tradition!



It warmed up enough on Thanksgiving for the kids to get some time playing outside.



Our boy cousins showed us the ropes of tree climbing!  ;)



We did appetizers for lunch and then ate our meal around 3:00.  Jorie and I were pretty proud of ourselves for pulling off an entire Thanksgiving meal all by ourselves! (with Justin's help too!)  I'm sure my mom is ready to pass on the duty of meal prep to us now.  ;)



After eating, we took a walk around our neighborhood and then hiked on the trail by our house.



I may look happy in that picture, but I seriously thought I was going to go into labor.  We hiked for about an hour and I think I had one massive braxton hicks contraction the entire hour.  It was miserable!  Between cooking, cleaning, and hiking, I was exhausted by the end of the day!

We also swapped date nights while they were here, which was super fun!  One of the nights Jorie and Mark checked out a movie at our most favorite movie venue, where you get a private table and can order dinner while you watch the movie.  On a different night, Justin and I went out for dinner and then coffee to celebrate his birthday a few days early.



Overall, a great visit from dear family!  The house certainly seems a lot quieter tonight.  Thanks for spending Thanksgiving with us this year, Dillmans!