Pictures from Thanksgiving

We went up to New York again for Thanksgiving this year, and enjoyed spending the holiday with three of my four sisters (plus Juliana and her husband Jeff and my "Aunt" Jan, none of whom managed to be in any of my pictures!). The drive there was even more horrendous than last year's, which is saying something.  If you ask Google Maps how long it will take to drive to Leah's house, they estimate it at 4-and-a-half hours.  But throw in DC's horrendous beltway traffic, freezing rain, a major holiday that makes the beltway even worse than usual, and a baby who needs to be fed every now and then, and we're talking a VERY long and tedious trip.  We left at 5pm.  We arrived at 2am.  Yes, it took us double the estimated time to get there.  Ugh.

The good news was that the kids were sleeping for a decent chunk of that time:

L-R: Bentley Kendra (barely visible, wrapped in her pink blankie), and Ryder

I'm leaning way over the seat to take this one of the baby sleeping.  We had stopped to get new windshield wipers because the ones we had were streaking.  The new ones weren't any better.  We could barely see for the entire drive...

This may be my favorite picture of Colton ever:

Apparently it was "No Shave" November for Uncle Ian.  Colton was fascinated-- it was the first mustache he'd ever seen!  For me, it was the first time I'd ever seen a real live version of Super Mario!

Fascinated.  Or possibly horrified...

But he still slept in Aunt Tracy's arms just fine...  So apparently the mustache did NOT give him nightmares.

Ryder and Eliot in a rare moment of sharing!

The kids watching TV

Eliot liked playing with his youngest cousin!

Ryder pretty much stopped sleeping while we were there, so here he is being a snuggle bug!

And one more favorite: Ian managed to snap this picture of Craig with his own phone and change it to his screen background.  I liked what it did then when Craig plugged it in so it then read "100% Charged."  Sure, Siri, he looks totally charged...

Those are all the pictures I have.  Which is terrible because most of the people who were there aren't in them!  Where is Rachael?  Juliana?  Jeff?  Leah and Brian, whose house we were staying at?????  I should not go into the documentary business.  Unless I want to create VERY dishonest documentaries.

Suffice it to say, there were a lot more people there than what you're seeing here.  And we all sat around eating and talking a lot.  And cooking all of the yummy Thanksgiving food we all love.  Oodles of all that stuff.  So much cooking that when we were done with the main feast, you couldn't tell that we'd made much of a dent in it.  It was that awesome!  My children did NOT spend very much time sleeping, and we're just now getting them back into good sleeping habits again (just in time for Christmas to knock them all out of whack!).

We left Saturday morning and drove into Manhattan, hoping to eat a couple of our favorite foods while there: we met up with Tracy, Rachael and Ian at the Shake Shack and had a splendid lunch, and Tracy was sweet and brought us cookies from Levaine Bakery so we wouldn't have to stop by there, too.  The drive home was slow, but not as bad as the drive there had been.

And I learned, when we arrived back at home, that setting the thermostat at 55 degrees was a bad idea.  But it warmed up eventually!

It was a lovely break-- I'm always so excited to see my sisters!  Now if only we could convince Natalie to come along, too, it would be perfect!