Thanksgiving weekend in review

I love having a nice, long break from our norm.  It's so refreshing and does our family good.  Claire and Emma had the entire week off of school and Justin was off starting Wednesday for the rest of the week.  It was a great combination of relaxing, working, fun, and connecting.

Claire had been saving her money for the last few birthdays to make the big American Girl doll purchase.  With the price tag of those dolls, her mom and dad were definitely NOT going to be buying her one.  She decided to follow her bigger cousin Anni's lead and save up her own money for one!  It was a great lesson in saving vs spending and she was so proud when she finally could buy her doll.  On Wednesday, we made the trek to the big city and Claire made the purchase.

Claire and Isabelle

On Thursday we headed to Justin's brother's house for the day.  Did you read that... FOR THE DAY! It is so amazing that we have family close enough that we can just go for the day!  What a blessing!  Both of Justin's brothers and their families were there, as well as his mom and step dad.  My sister in law graciously hosted all 19 of us.. what a gal!

All of the cousins.  That's a lot of kiddos!  #shoefam is quite the crew!

On Friday, we had to deal with the van in our garage that refused to start, even after trying to jump it.  

At least it provided some temporary entertainment!  ;)  

We Justin spent lots of the day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday ripping out our kitchen backsplash and putting in a new one.  The old one was bad.  So so bad.  It was an obvious DIY by the previous owner.  Haha, we somehow think our DIY will be better.  ;)  But it was not only super ugly, but just so terribly done.  We were inspired by some friends who just did theirs themselves and said it was pretty easy!  We found a tile saw to borrow and the rest is history!  

Destruction!

New tile is up. All that is left is the grout.. then it will be done!  

On Saturday we had a fun and unexpected visit with old friends.  You know those kind of friends who you don't see often, but who know you so well and you just pick up where you left off?  Yeah, it was those kind of friends.  I'm bummed I didn't take a picture of our crew, but it was a short and sweet visit.  We met the Hwangs when we were living in Chattanooga, both of us before having kids.  Then we both moved to Atlanta around the same time for jobs, both HATED it (this was our first move to the ATL in 2007), and then both moved back to the Midwest around the same time. Crazy, right? They now have two girls, close to our girls' ages and were back in the Chicago area for Thanksgiving.  It was so fun catching up and our girls acted like they've been friends forever!  Justin and I reflected on how thankful we are for friends like Phil and Kristen!  It was a great visit.  

It was a fun and full weekend!  We have so much to be thankful for!

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!

More TN pics

My sis-in-law is a fabulous photographer and she sent me some of her pictures from our week in TN.  They are waaay better than mine... here are a few!  If you live in Chi-town, you really should hire her!  ;)

Love this one.

Grammy & Babu with all of their grandchildren

More dance party action!

Love this one of Justin & Emma!

The whole group!

Break from hiking to do a little 'gangnam style!'

Thanksgiving in TN

We just spent five fabulous days with my whole family in the mountains of Gatlinburg, TN.  We all agreed that this was the best way we've spent Thanksgiving.  We stayed in a huge cabin (called Party Hut) complete with game room, pool table, arcade games, theater room, two kitchens, five bedrooms, two hot tubs, two wrap-around decks, and a gorgeous view of the Smokey Mountains.  My parents took us out for a Thanksgiving meal which meant no one had to slave away in the kitchen preparing, cooking, and cleaning.  Score!!  Each family took turns cooking a meal, we hiked, relaxed, played games, went to Dollywood, explored the town, and had so much fun just being together.  New tradition?? ;)

Claire was in heaven surrounded by her cousins all week! 




Since no one had to cook on Thanksgiving, we headed to the Smokies for a morning hike to Clingman's Dome, which is the second highest point in the Appalachian Mountains.  The views were breathtaking... God's creation never ceases to amaze and overwhelm me.  But this girl is still scarred from a high school missions trip van accident in the mountains... so let's just say I was a little tense on those curvy mountain roads!  Yikes!


Emma was ready to go!


Before hiking up, Jason & Roxi shared some sweet Psalms for us to reflect on before we started our trek. 







Claire and Evy were little hiking buddies.






We made it to the top!









Ready to head back down.











Beautiful.








Babu and Silas being daredevils.






Sissies.

After lunch and relaxing at the cabin, we headed to Mama's Farmhouse for our Thanksgiving dinner.   It was PACKED with other smarties who decided to let someone else cook and clean this Thanksgiving.  They had bag toss (aka cornhole) and hula hoops out for people to pass the time while they waited.


Turns out my dad, Jorie, and Anni are serious hula hoopers!





Beautiful sunrise.

The next day we went to Dollywood and despite a little rain and cooler temps, we all had a blast.  We were there from 11 am- 9 pm!  Yes, my in-bed-at--7-pm-girls were riding rides and partying for 10 hours straight!  Emma had a few meltdowns but other than that, it was fab-u-lous! 









I even reverted back to my high school ways and went crazy riding all the roller coasters.  Justin snapped this picture while Roxi and I were riding!



They were impressed!




The last day was spent relaxing at the cabin and ended with an intense game of eating nasty Jelly Bellies!  We played this game several years ago with Bertie Botts Beans and this year we found a new assortment of disgusting-ness.  Think skunk, barf, booger, rotten egg, baby wipes, centipede, toothpaste, canned dog food... yes, we are very strange and we do this for fun. 



It was an amazing week and we are so thankful for my parents' generosity!!  Lots of sweet memories were made.