Thanksgiving Re-cap and Reflections

I haven't been updating recently for a number of reasons. Of course, I am simply so busy that whenever I plan to write something, it must wait and then it seems so off topic and late. However, keeping track of the years and documenting the life of my family is important to me, so I figured I should write about Thanksgiving even though it was a couple of weeks ago.


So, yes. Thanksgiving.

The past couple of years, we have hosted both of our families for Thanksgiving, which has been really nice, but this year, Chris's parents rented the beach house in the Outer Banks that we have stayed at a few times. It was a nice change of pace and the boys love going to "Mawmaw's beach house". They don't quite get that we don't own it. When I explain renting to Eliot, he just says the owners are so nice to share with us. Um, well, no, but. Sure. OK.

My parents ever-so-kindly allowed our dachshunds to stay with them for Thanksgiving and we took Marlowe down to the beach house. She gets very excited about visitors and has been known to steal food off of the counter, so I didn't want her to ruin my parents' dinner. Two dachshunds is enough--they didn't need a lab too. Ha. We headed down on Wednesday afternoon. It quite literally took me SIX HOURS to get everything ready for just a two-night trip. How? I don't know. Maybe because I would get the boys dressed and then walk in the other room to pack. When I returned to the den, Jack had gotten his clothes messy with food and Eliot threw his socks off into some infinite abyss of dog hair. Ugh. I would pack the bags and then Jack (who was just really excited) would UNpack the bags. Traveling with kids is insane. Insane.

BUT WE MADE IT. After we got settled in, we headed to see The Good Dinosaur movie, which was kind of a big deal for us because Eliot has not been able to go see a movie since he was about two years old. Eliot doesn't handle loud noises well, so whenever I'd try to take him to a movie, he'd run out screaming with a trail of pop corn behind him. It was bad. We made it work this time and he just covered his ears some. Jack did a fantastic job and sat the whole time.

On Thanksgiving, we walked down the beach and had fun playing in the sand and getting a little wet. Just a little. Marlowe may or may not have--OK, she did--eaten half of a pie and some rolls, so she was officially banned from the kitchen area if there was any food out. We managed to piece together a great Thanksgiving dinner despite cooking in a kitchen that was not our own.

On Friday, we had Duck Donuts for breakfast, took a walk on the beach, and slowly packed to head back to home and start thinking about Christmas decorating.