A weekend recap................

Thanksgiving was wonderful. It always involves a lot of travel on our part- but that is our choice as it is important to us go get to spend the day with both families.

It started at my brother and sister in laws house- where we got to visit with all these yahoos.

These are all the cousins on my side of the family and my mom snuggled in the middle of that mess. What a great group of kids.

Then we progressed over to Richmond where we really got the party going with this group of goofy kids......

These are the little cousins on Dan's side (the bigger cousins are over 20 and not with us this year, wahhh!)

Here are all the pie makers with Dan's grandpa (92 years old!) and his plate with a slice from each. I bet his belly was aching from all those sweets (I say that as though I didn't have some of each too!)

Needless to say, with the closerness of ages with these cousins, versus my family, these guys created a bunch of chaos and noise. They so love to be together, and I love that they love to be together.

And here is the whole group on Dan's side. My husband is broken, so he was crabby. We only got to visit a couple of hours before he declared we had to go. It wasn't the happiest ending to a wonderful day- but I understood his pain. I didn't understand his crabbiness. I never get like that (wink wink)

Just a pulled muscle, but it is creating a bunch of discomfort for him.

I was up and at Wal-Mart (yeah, you heard me right) at 4:30 am Friday. I won't going into details, but it was nuts and over the top crazy. Probably not worth it, but I love the fact that Dan's mom, sister and I go shopping every year the day after Thanksgiving. So for that reason, I wanted to go. I arrived, right on time, with coffee for us all and my running shoes strapped on.

We shopped for hours, at tons of places, and did get some good deals as well as lots of stuff not on our lists. Whatever. But I will tell you, I was the FIRST in line at Wal-greens Friday morning. So what if it was just Wal-Greens, I was first!

And then on Saturday- I was blessed with the opportunity to join Shelley and the kids as they went to greet Dave as he returned from his deployment in Iraq. I can not imagine what it is like to leave your family, or have your husband leave, for 11 months. Shelley has been in the majority of my prayers this year, and it was so awesome to get to be with her when he returned. The entire thing was a huge emotional love fest- watching all of these people be reunited with their families. I felt like an intruder in the most memorable, emotional moment of their lives. I was glad that Shelley needed help with the kids so that I could join her. And believe it or not, I forgot my camera. Of all the things in the world that would have been cool to photograph, this was it. But Dave had his- so at least there are some pictures for them to capture the moment.

Yesterday- I took the kids to see Madagascar 2 at the theater. It was my attempt to give Dan a quiet afternoon so he could sleep. The medicine they put him on at the ER is really making him tired. This was my first trip with all 3 alone to the theater. Sam- who won't potty train, declares in the middle of the movie he has to go pee pee. So I ran him to the restroom and when we came out, he took off running the wrong way and ran right into the wrong theater! My heart sank as I was running through a dark theater looking for my heathen son. But I found him.

And then today.

Snow- yeah!

Emi is not handling this cold she has well, so I am running her to the doctor. Then we'll all try to go the airshow for some quality work time.

So that's it, my weekend in a nut shell. It was super busy, and by last night I was crying in the kitchen because I felt to wiped out. Hopefully there will be some rest time this week and I can 'refresh' : )