thanksgiving fun

Thanksgiving this year was super fun, and totally different than usual.  Since my family all lives so far away, we almost never spend Thanksgiving with them.  Bart's parents are the only family that live close, and they are often traveling for holidays, so we rarely spend Thanksgiving with them either.  We have been lucky to have lots of friends that we can celebrate Thanksgiving with on any given year, but most of those friends have since moved away.  I was wishing that we had more family close by, and I realized that my closest relatives are two cousins and their families that live in Minneapolis. I haven't seen them in years, but when we were growing up, I saw them all the time. So, I decided to invite ourselves to Minneapolis to spend Thanksgiving with them.  Janessa and Jeremy were such great hosts and it was fun to see Vance and Annalisa too.  Our kids all got along with their kids and it made for such a fun holiday.  Plus, it was the 3rd time that Everly and I traveled out of state in the month of November, so that made it interesting!

 After playing at a fun indoor playground, and eating at a delicious pizza place, we all headed to the movie theater to watch Coco.  I wasn't expecting it to be very good, but it was amazing and we all loved it!  Some of us may have even cried more than once.  The kids have been singing the soundtrack ever since.

 The next morning was Thanksgiving morning, and we got up bright and early and headed to the Mall of America where we were involved in a walk to end hunger charity event.  Basically we all just got free shirts, walked around inside the closed mall, and stopped at fun booths for things like balloon animals, glitter tattoos,

 crown making,

 face painting,

and more.  It was a fun, memorable way to spend the morning, and it made me want to go back to the Mall of America sometime when I can shop and go on all the fun rides!

 We managed to get a fun picture of all the kiddos

 My kids had a blast playing with their kids and their kids' toys while the grownups prepared the Thanksgiving feast.

I brought this fun turkey craft for the kids to do, and Krew is one of the few that actually finished theirs.  No surprise here-he takes this sort of thing very seriously.

 All of the food was incredibly delicious, and it was fun to catch up with my cousins and their spouses and talk about their siblings and mine, as well as reminisce about our childhood memories.

 The kids table

Vance, me, and Janessa

 Apparently we are super funny when we get together.  Hopefully we will be able to visit them again soon!