A Southern Thanksgiving

We had such an awesome time in Nashville this Thanksgiving.  Every other year all the Francis boys and their families head over to Tennessee for a relaxing weekend of food, football and good company.  

It has become a tradition for the kids to help Granmommy make the pull apart bread for Thanksgiving dinner.  They love doing anything in the kitchen.  Especially rolling balls of bread dough into balls and seeing who can make the teeny tiniest balls ever.

Granmommy bought a great Gingerbread House kit and Mia and Peyton had a blast decorating it Friday night.  Peyton kept looking back and forth from the box to the actual house to see if they were putting the pieces in the right places.  I only helped a little with the icing and they did a great job!  Saturday morning Dustin, LeNan, Peyton and Reagan left after breakfast to start their long car ride back to Texas.  We were sad to see them go, but happy that it would only be a few weeks before we would see them again. 

Later Saturday morning Mia, Granmommy and I went out to the movies.  There is this program called Kidtoons and on certain days they show kids movies for $3.00 per child and adults are free!  We saw Barbie in A Christmas Carol.  Mia was sooo excited to see a Barbie movie on the big screen.  This is a picture of her kissing her M & M's just before the movie.  The M& M's cost more than her ticket cost.  I know I am a nerd, but I love Barbie movies.  It was so cool to get to sit through one uninterrupted with Mia.  I cried a couple different times during the movie.  I know, I know.  

Much later, Saturday afternoon we got a chance to visit with Logan, Jennifer, little baby Campbell and some of their family as well over at their new house about half an hour from Granmommy and Grandaddy's house.  Initially Mia didn't want to go and be separated from the family, but after an hour of croquet and chases with Logan's younger brother Sean, she was ready to move in and never look back.  

After many tears and much sadness on Mia's part after departing her beloved Sean we headed over to Opryland Hotel.  It is so cool.  We love going there and seeing all the great Christmas decorations they put up each year.  We usually spend a lot more time there than we did this year, but because of our venture out to see Logan we didn't have a whole lot of time before we needed to get Lennon down for bed.  It was a great day though and he actually did really well considering how thrown off his schedule was all week.  

Sunday we got up and rushed out the door to go to Granmommy and Grandaddy's church.  Mia went to Sunday School and loved it of course.  Lennon did well in the nursery and Shelby, Kelsey, Bethany and I heard some of the best church music we had ever heard.  The band at the end played a song that would rival most pop music.  It was really good.  After church we had brunch at Mimi's.  Mia was excited that I let her order chocolate chip pancakes and Lennon ate half of what everyone else ordered.  That freakin' kid can put away some serious food!  

At the airport we asked to be on the standby list for an earlier connecting flight because the one we were scheduled on had us in DC for about three hours and not getting home until 7 45.  Well...they ended up having room for two seats on the earlier flight, so Shelby took Lennon and I stayed back with Mia to wait for our scheduled flight.  However - the earlier flight which was supposed to leave at 3 15, did not board until 5 and then sat on the runway for an additional 45 minutes before taking off.  Lennon slept the whole way for Shelby.  Poor baby was so exhausted from the long weekend.  At one point they announced that my and Mia's flight was delayed "indefinitely", but happily it arrived and we boarded by about 8 o'clock - just one half hour past when we thought we would be landing in Boston.  We walked through the door of our house just before 11 completely drained.  Mia slept most of the way home from the airport and while I waited for our bags and went straight into her bed and slept like a log.  

Now, several days later, I am soooo sooo tired.  This week has been so super long.  Traveling on Sunday was stressful enough and then Monday I wreck the car and spend the whole week dealing with that and credit card stuff and phone stuff and blah blah blah blah blah.  I need to go to sleep.  I think I will.