Thanksgiving in Utah

As is becoming tradition, we went to Utah for Thanksgiving this year. It just so happened that my sister Katie and her family were flying to Florida the same day and had a stop in Austin. They weren't actually supposed to get off the plane but my sister got the flight attendant to let her and Noah off for a quick hello.

Usually we stay at one family's house for the entire trip, but this year we stayed at 3 different houses and even though it was kind of a pain to move our stuff around, it was actually really nice, because basically you see the people you stay with the most and this way we made sure we got to see lots of people. We started the trip at Jeremy and Kimmy's house. The kids had a ton of fun in their crazy awesome game room. Here is a sign we found on the wall one day "In 3 minutes there will be a play including Harry Potter and Red Riding Hood." It was epic.

My sister Meghan and her family still live in Utah so they joined us on some of our outings, including the requisite trip to the Discovery Zone. Here is Lucy and Netta doing their best cow and mailman impersonations. 

 We also hit up the indoor amusement park Jungle Jim's which is a must do in my book. Meghan joined us for that as well. Here is one of Timmy and Conrad. I loved that Conrad was willing to ride everything.

One night we met up with John's friend Chris from high school. We went out to dinner and Conrad is so stinkin cute that he actually got himself a free shake the size of his body. He really knows how to win people over.

Our Thanksgiving meal was of course followed by frisbee dodgeball. Netta took the lazy approach and rode this little tricycle around the whole time.

EZ was much more in on the action.

It is hard to find places that can fit all of John's family when we get together. This year we ended up renting out a gymnastics studio. The highlight of the night would have to be John and his brother in-law Adam launching all of the kids into the foam pit. I love this shot of EZ and I am amazed no one broke anything.

The second house we stayed at was Buffy's. We have actually never stayed with her before and I am so glad we did. While we were there Conrad discovered that he can sneak out through their doggy door. He was very proud of himself.

One of my favorite parts of going back to Utah is getting to visit BYU. Meghan and I took the kids to the bookstore, which ended in a lot of tears and probably wasn't the best idea, but they loved getting a treat in the Cougar Eat and chilling in the Wilksinson Center. 

We also got to visit with my friend Peter and his wife Maile and their family. We haven't seen them since EZ was a baby. They moved to Utah from New York over a year ago, but I had forgotten they were there so we didn't visit them last Thanksgiving. Oops

EZ and their son Asher are just a couple months apart in age. Here they are the last time we saw them at about a year old and then at age 7. I would say they have grown a bit.

Netta hadn't met any of their kids before, but of course that didn't stop her from becoming instant best friends with their daughters.

The last family we stayed with on the trip was Misha's. While we were there, there was a huge snow storm. My kids were ecstatic. Netta didn't last very long, probably due to the fact that we don't have the best winter clothes, but EZ would have stayed out there all day.

I wasn't sure what Conrad would think of it but he loved every second of it. It was so funny to see him crawling through it. I figured he would be out after the first bit of snow touched his face, but nope he just kept going.

We always get comments when we travel about how many kids we have. Well especially when we are flying out of Austin. SLC not so much. HaHa. John made quite the impressive haul this year with 6 suitcases a backpack and 2 car seats on his back. Oh and I am sure he was carrying a child at some point as well.

As always we had a great time and loved seeing so much family. We also worked on some family history and of course John's is all done thanks to his pioneer heritage, but I learned that there is lots of work to do on my side of the family. I guess it's time to get crackin'!