Tucson Thanksgiving

Packing up 5 suitcases, an entire family van and all of the baby essentials is never an easy or quick task. I started packing the kids on Sunday, packed myself on Monday, realized that a couple of the pre-packed bags had been unpacked by some live-in monkeys, re-packed those bags on Tuesday and started to load up the van. Are you dizzy yet? I sure was... literally. We left for Tucson on Tuesday evening and it honestly took me ALL day to get us out the door. I was in a poopy mood until we buckled our seat belts and put the van in drive. It felt so good to drive away knowing that the next few days would be filled with family, good food, an unscheduled husband and lots of fun family time!

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Wednesday to accommodate Pete's dad and brother's work schedules. It was so great to spend the holiday with Peter's parents and some of his siblings. An added bonus was having his Grandpa and Grandma Murray there from Oregon!

The kids were in HEAVEN playing with their cousins.

Here are some of the highlights of our Thanksgiving in Tucson:

watching the boys play together...

watching the girls entertain each other...

eating a super-yummy Thanksgiving meal together...

watching the javelina knock over the outside garbage cans and eat our leftovers...

going to the shooting range to shoot Casey's guns (one of my "blonde" moments was when I put the bullets in backwards... I thought I was going to have to buy Casey a new gun, but a kind employee of the range fixed it for us. Sorry for the scare Casey and you're welcome, everyone else for the good laugh :))...

staying in a nearby hotel and jumping on the bed. Claire showed us all up by jumping from the window ledge to the bed.

watching the Thanksgiving day parade in our pajamas in the hotel room...playing in Grandpa and Grandma's backyard...

playing in the cousins backyard...

watching the girls (Claire and Katie) hide a bag of oranges from Grandpa Murray. This random game lasted the entire time we were there. Each day we would meet up and somehow, this bag of oranges would show up. The girls would hold the bag, hide and then yell "Grandpa!!! Come and get the oranges!!!! He would sneak up on them, scare them and the girly screams would pierce our ears. Claire adores him...

visiting Grandpa Waldron at work and exploring his helicopter (he is a life-flight pilot)...

meeting Peter's cousins for the first time and having a big family lunch together...

playing Loaded Questions back at the house with those cousins.

We had a wonderful time. Dallin and Claire slept the entire way home on Friday night... this was great except for the fact that Claire thinks her cousins only live a few minutes away. She gets angry that I won't take her to Katie's house to play. If only we all did live a little closer.