Thanksgiving

So.  Long story short, I planned to surprise Stacy and go with my parents up to Oregon for Thanksgiving while Peter stayed home to work at the firestation and on our house.  Needless to say mom gave it away to Stacy without realizing it and Stacy caught on and called me out on us coming when we were minutes away from surprising her!

This was what the car ride looked like.  Lots of ipads and ear phones.  Corey was pretty excited to be using the ear phones.

Pit stop at a restaurant.  The drive is painful, I can't lie.  It's long and boring and takes about 11 hours without stopping.

But it was worth it when we got there! We visited some more amazing waterfalls and went on a hike.  The kids were in heaven!

We walked underneath this beautiful waterfall

We went to the beach one day.  It was beautiful and fun but a little bit miserable.  The wind and rain were beating down on us pretty hard.  We still managed to have a good time.  The kids still got their feet wet and played in the sand and found sea shells to bring home.

We also went to the Zoo lights.  It was amazing!  It also down-pored the entire time on us while we were there, but it was actually kind of fun!  It wasn't cold and the kids were having blast looking at the animals and lights.

Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without gingerbread houses and lots of games...even if Jeremy cheats :)

We ended our Thanksgiving vacation with a visit to the park.  This is what her park looks like: a grove of trees!

On our way home we went through this horrible canyon with snow.  It's a 6% incline for quite a few miles straight.  It made for slick roads, and lots of cars and semi's that couldn't make it and were pulled off the road or slid off.  We were so thankful to make it through that canyon without any incident.  It was a very fun vacation.  We played lots and had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner.  Stacy and Jeremy are great hosts!  We missed our dad and husband terribly though and he was even sick on Thanksgiving.  It made me really sad to hear that, but a dear friend Lisa was so thoughtful and dropped off some crackers and soda to him at the apartment.  That made me feel a tiny bit better.  It was sure hard leaving Peter, Brooke especially was sad to not have dad come with us.  But he was a good guy to let us go, and probably won't let it happen again!