Thanksgiving/ Arkansas Visit

We had quite a trip this year for Thanksgiving!  We headed out Saturday for Atlanta and had such a nice drive out there.  The kids couldn't have been better in the car, which was a very pleasant surprise to us.  We didn't have to use the DVD player until we were about 30 minutes from Josh's mom's house (isn't it strange how they always seem to have a meltdown at the very end of a trip, no matter how long the trip is?).  We had a nice relaxing time with Josh's mom, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandmother, cousins, and all the nieces and nephews!  Anna lives in a really neat suburb of Atlanta called Peachtree City, where a lot of the town rides around on golf carts everywhere they go.  The whole town is laid out with golf trails through beautiful scenery.  The high school parking lot is filled with golf carts!  This is something the boys talk about frequently.  Jack gets very lulled, and will just snuggle into me the second we take off.  James loves to drive in Nana Anna's lap.  We stayed with Nana Anna for a few days and then headed over to Smyrna, where Papa Joe lives.

We had a great second half of the week there.  We did lots of shopping and had lots of fun eating out together.  Thanksgiving Day was tons of fun, as usual.  We started out the day watching the parade and eating breakfast at Papa Joe's house.  Then we headed over to Aunt Allyson's in Fayetteville for a Mitchell side Thanksgiving.  As always, there were tons of laughs, great times playing out in the beautiful yard, and lots of good conversation.

Midday, we headed over to Josh's dad's side of the family's Thanksgiving down in Locust Grove.  It was so great to see everyone, and we had a wonderful time there too!  We are so blessed to have so much family that gets together all in one stop every year!  We enjoyed the delicious food and sat around the big table and talked!  We got to meet Julia's new baby, who is adorable, and the kids had tons of fun playing upstairs with cousins.  We then walked to the town Christmas tree lighting, sang Christmas songs, and saw Santa come in on a firetruck.

Friday was another fun filled day.  We met up with my cousin, Matt, his wife Teresa, and their adorable kids, Matthew and Emma for lunch in Smyrna.  It is always such a treat to get to see them.  Matt was my super-cool, hilarious older cousin who we all looked up to growing up.  He is about the only family member on that side who has moved from the north to the south (besides our family and his parents who live in the South during the winter).

Jack's Georgia Birthday Party

Saturday, we loaded up the car and headed west for Arkansas!!  We worked it out to where we could have a college roomie+ families reunion at Kim's BRAND new house (just moved in that week) for the weekend!  On our way there, we stopped in Birmingham to see our good friends, Cody and Lauren, who were there visiting family for Thanksgiving.  We were so happy that it was going to work out to where we could meet up with them and meet their daughter, Everleigh!  We had a great time chatting with them over breakfast at Original Pancake house (one of my favorite restaurants), and it felt like no time had passed since we'd seen them last.

After saying goodbye, we headed on to Hot Springs.  We were so excited to see our friends, meet Aubrey Kate (also pretty brand new) and Georgia Kelley, and have the kids all get to play together!  We had such a nice visit with them, as always.  Kim was a wonderful hostess to let us take over the house, after having just moved in.  We always pick right up where we left off, and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to talk to Kim and Amanda for hours on end.  We even did a fun craft together that Amanda picked up for us.  We made Christmas wreaths that Amanda had figured out how to do, and they turned out SO cute!  I can only take credit for about 10% of mine though, because Amanda did most of mine for me.

We headed out on Monday, and enjoyed the drive back home together, before diving back into life the next day. :)