Dauphin Thanksgiving

 Thanksgiving Gabriel's dad rented a plantation house to have dinner because it is a little tight in the house. It was a super nice place of course with an industrial kitchen and lots of space to run around!

 Room to shoot guns

Fun wagon rides

And a good game of softball

Plenty of room to spread out and eat...

 The kitchen had lots of things to play with...Brigitte really loved her Uncle Duane!

Official taste tester!

 Just some interesting games we played!

 Us with Gabriel's sister Sarah on the far left and his nieces Savannah and Katie and nephew David.

Took a little love to get Violet to like Uncle Denny but he did get to her to like him. He just had to squeeze her extra tight!

Fun in Georgia!

So in our week long trip we got to do plenty of stuff. Sadly not sure how this happened but we didn't get any pictures with grandma or grandpa! Brigitte had a really hard time understanding that she has two grandma's and grandpa's. She really didn't understand until a good day or two after we got there. She is still talking about Betty Boop and the piano at grandma's house and all the "guys" as she calls them (her cousins and uncles) at grandpa's!

First stop that we always have to make is to Gabriel's sisters shop to get our hair cuts. The girls were not excited about this at all!!! Violet had to sit on my lap with a sucker and Brigitte just sat very still and wouldn't talk until she got out of the chair! I got my hair hi-lighted and Gabriel finally didn't have to cut his own hair for once!

We also spent a little time downtown. Moultrie has some pretty nice decorates and Brigitte of course likes anything Christmas. It is always fun to me to hear Gabriel show and tell me about things he did while he lived there!

Brigitte had so much fun with her cousins! She has never been around them but once she meet them she never wanted to leave them. The girl cousins are much older but of course just like any little girl she loved playing with them and then the ones that her are her age are boys which Brigitte loves playing with little boys better than girls!

 Riding grandpa's tractor and kind of helping...

 This is my favorite picture! Brigitte just adored Katie! We told her she could come live with us anytime!

This trip is also the first time I have ever met Gabriel's oldest brother and his family! After 6 1/2 years of marriage I have finally met all 7 siblings. And of course Denny is just another goofy Dauphin boy just like the rest of them! :D

Run with the husband

I accomplished many things with this run! 1. I kept up with my husband!!! 2. Ran in the rain 3. Didn't have to worry about a babysitter! It was really fun to run with him and wish we could do it more often. Please family come move closer!!! Of course I haven't ran since this so I better get on it!

Probably Gabriel's favorite was getting to go on his first hunting trip. They went quail hunting at a plantation near by! Plenty of stories to be told from this adventure. They said it was cold but of course it was fun!

 Austin's turn

Duane helping David

 

Traveling to Georgia

We had decided early on in the year that we would be spending Thanksgiving with part of Gabriel's family in Georgia. However I never concerned how long that drive would be! 20 hours of driving! Come the night before we left I was anxious, exited, and worried about the trip! I always get anxious before any trip and wake up super early....this trip I woke up at 3:45 am and didn't sleep until well after 11 pm and then jumped in the van at 4 am!

I must say I am getting pretty good at finding deals and such besides the fact that I am cheap I am a deal hunter. Anyway I must brag because we ended up getting our rental van for free!!! We had some major hail damage to my car and decided that we finally need to fix it. So while it was getting fixed we just happened to be traveling to Georgia! My car was only going to take 3 days to fix but we were going to be gone 10 but the nice guys at the shop said oh we can just tell the insurance we need it for 10 days! So bam free rental because insurance was paying for it. Oh and I didn't have to pay a deductiable because the shop takes care of the deductables on hair damage cars! Double bam! Alright enough of my bragging onto the fun stuff.

So as stated before we left at 4am thinking that it would be easier to just pull the girls from bed and then they would fall back asleep. Well both girls were pretty excited. 1. because we were going on a trip and 2. Our rental had a DVD player in it. So they didn't fall asleep for awhile but they were entertained by the "new" DVDs I got at the library.

Of course I looked up all kinds of blogs giving suggestions about what to do/bring on a long road trip. The most helpful besides the DVD player in the car was cookie sheets! The girls could basically play with any toy! Brilliant idea! I did go to Target and bought a bunch of little $1 toys too. So every hour or so they got a "new" toy.

We were trying to make the trip a little more fun by finding cool places to stop but between Hutch and Moultrie there really isn't much beside Memphis and even there there wasn't much kid friendly things. We did however find a really neat restaurant that was perfect!

It was a resturant inside an old Southwest plane. It was also perfect becuase the girls could run around and let some energy out!

Brigitte is really into airplanes right now so it was perfect! She was so excited. She was a little nervous about the cockpit but we just made her take a few pictures! Violet loved running up and down the aisles! Hopefully she won't we doing that in January when we are on a real plane! :S

 

The restaurant is actually at a small airport so we even got to see a plane kind of take off. He drove around a building and we didn't get to see him lift off but we saw him in the sky. Brigitte thought it was funny that they put their two dogs in the airplane too! The restaurant is in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas so if you are ever close by it is so fun!