Thanksgiving and Other Adventures - Grand Adventure for November, Part 1

Oh, November, you were so good to us! We had a rather quiet and boring beginning of the month, but that was on purpose because we knew what was coming. And who was the first most wonderful, perfect, exciting person that came to us in November?

CG, of course!

That beautiful, smiling face could make our whole month amazing by itself, but oh boy, were we ever not done! Our monthly Grand Adventure for November ended up being more like an actual vacation than our other Adventures so far. (An explanation for our fabulous monthly week-long vacations/Grand Adventures is here, and our other adventures are here: April, May part 1, May part 2, June, July, August, September and October.)

This Adventure was full of fun surprises, family, and good times. CG got there so late on Tuesday night that it was actually Wednesday morning. This meant that we got to hang out at home together for most of Wednesday, the quiet before the storm. Then we got all packed up and traveled to Marquis's brother's house for Pie Night. Pie Night is a brilliant invention where the night before Thanksgiving, you go ahead and have just pie. Pie is, after all, the best part about Thanksgiving and you can't fully appreciate it when your belly is full from a wonderful dinner, so why not give pie it's own time to shine? Brilliant idea, I tell you.

The fun part about this night was that we had a big surprise in store. You see, this past year Marquis's parents both turned 70, and Thanksgiving is right in the middle of their birthdays, so Pie Night was so much more than just eating pie, it was the kickoff for an entire surprise birthday weekend extravaganza. 

One big surprise was that Marquis's sister from Missouri flew out with her kids. When Marquis's parents got there, his sister and crew were hiding in the next room, and popped out as we were singing Happy Birthday. The biggest surprise of all was my nephew, who we all thought was on a mission in Peru for our church. He had some health problems and had to come home, and the timing could not have been more perfect! It was so great to see him!

We had huge amounts of cousin time. We are very fortunate that our kids and their cousins are all friends and seem to genuinely like spending time together. It was also fun to have CG spending time with the older cousins, doing midnight Taco Bell runs where they didn't actually make it to Taco Bell and singing along to Disney movies. 

We spent a couple of nights at Marquis's brother's house so the cousin time didn't even have to stop at night. 

And of course in the middle of all the fun was this wonderful holiday called Thanksgiving where we ate delicious food with wonderful people. 

 I have so many pictures that I'm going to stop here and do a part 2. To be continued!