Thanksgiving

Well I got ahead of myself. Here I am talking about the Christmas season when I have yet to post about our amazing Thanksgiving this year!

We decided to go the non-traditional route and head out of town for Thanksgiving. Usually Charlene makes us an AMAZING meal at home and we all enjoy a quiet day filled with reading the ads, watching the parade, cooking, eating, cleaning, hanging out, and then Black Friday shopping. Not this year!

The day before Thanksgiving we packed our bags and drive down to Bryce Canyon National Park. Mark and Charlene were kind enough to treat us all to a nice mini-vacation. We stayed at the Ruby's Inn Lodge, right at the mouth of the canyon. It was gorgeous!

Wednesday night they had an ice cream social for the guests. They had my favorite! Brownies and mint chocolate chip ice cream! :) Amazing! We had fun catching up with family but we were missing Spency pants. He's still in New York doing his residency.

 Thursday morning we woke up, watched the parade, and got ready for our hike. We met the family at the mouth of the canyon and planned out our right. We did the Navajo Loop and I'm SO glad we were able to get this in! It felt great to be able to hike the morning of Thanksgiving, spend time with family, and burn some calories before we had a food coma later that afternoon.

Liam enjoyed being passed around by each of us. He loved the views and kept saying, "What's that?" while pointing at all the sights. We took a short break at the bottom of the canyon before we made our way back up. Neal and Nate were troopers and carried the babies all the way back up! The rest of us were dying on the hike out but they didn't complain once, kept the lead, and held sleeping babies the whole way. Greatest dads :)

 Thanksgiving dinner was catered that afternoon. All we had to do was show up! The food was amazing and exceeded our expectations. There were so many choices too! We had appetizers, turkey AND ham, and all kinds of pies for dessert. It was a nice meal and we all enjoyed being able to relax and eat and not worry about the cooking (or cleaning for that matter).

 We went back to our room, took a nap, then went for a quick dip in the indoor pool! After that we attended the ugly sweater party and dance off! WE WON IT ALL!! Not really, but we should have. Jen and I enjoyed doing the Gangnam Style dance with our sweet little boys. We danced the night away while enjoying more leftovers and desserts.

Overall it was a great way to spend the vacation. We love spending time with our family and really enjoyed this little getaway. We're hoping to go back in a couple years and maybe make a tradition out of it. Happy Thanksgiving!