Here we are a week into December and I have a hundred photos from Thanksgiving weekend that I still haven’t shared. Let’s just rewind a few weeks and recap all the fun things we had going on over here!
The weekend before Thanksgiving, my parents hosted a rehearsal dinner for my cousin in the barn. It was seriously gorgeous (I’ll share some photos at some point) and since it was still festive with tables everywhere, my mom decided that Thanksgiving dinner should be in the barn, too. We were blessed with amazing weather for the holiday weekend with highs in the mid-seventies and all the sunshine. We had about fifty people for lunch and stayed until well after dark.
My dad even had the forethought to move the television out to the barn so the men could stand around and watch football… while surrounded by power tools, so it was all sorts of manly over there in that corner.
Can we just take a minute and talk about how cool the barn is? I know I’ve talked about it before and showed you pictures from Sophie’s birthday, but these give you a much better idea of how things actually look. My parents have always wanted a “pool house” and since my dad plans to build pretty things from home once he retires, he has always wanted a barn/workshop. After almost a year, it is really starting to come together! There is a huge porch on the far left that faces the pool. By summer, it will have a wooden decked floor and ceiling fans. Behind the white door is my dad’s office and a future kitchen/bathroom for the pool goers. Through the barn doors is my dad’s workshop (on the right) and the big open space is for parties! How amazing is the vintage Texaco sign? My dad bought that on a trading site and it comes on at dusk and goes off again at dawn. It looks so pretty all lit up.
Despite all of the tools and wood inside, my parents have it all decorated so pretty! They added tablecloths and barstools to all of the table saws and my dad made two huge farm tables for us to sit around. It was seriously one of my favorite Thanksgivings ever!
Not to mention the food and company were spot on!
The kids love this little tree by the pool fence. It has the perfect branches for climbing and they spend a lot of their summer here in bathing suits. Of course, we couldn’t let Thanksgiving go by without a good climb.
My printable place mats were a huge hit and the kids spent a lot of time coloring in the afternoon. My parents had all of the poolside tables out in the driveway so that we could eat and visit outside, too.
I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before, but one of my cousins moved to Hawaii a month or so ago and we are all missing her like crazy! We have a huge family, but we all live really close together (think 25 of us on the same street as my grandparents’ farm) and spend a lot of time together. It is pretty much unheard of to go a single day without seeing somebody that doesn’t live in your house. We had a computer set up at the wedding last month so that she could watch via Facetime and we were all so excited to chat with her after we ate lunch on Thanksgiving. I’m sure it was super overwhelming for her, because there were almost forty people clamoring for the sight of her face and all of the little cousins were screaming over each other to tell her hello. I love everything about this picture — it shows how excited we all were to hear her voice!
After the sun went down, we grabbed coffee and marshmallows and hung out around the fire while the guys yelled at the television screen and played cards for hours. My clothes and hair still smell like smoke, but family campfires are my favorite.
My kids are well aware that the morning after Thanksgiving brings a trip to the tree tent and a big pancake breakfast. We had a minor argument over where to eat for breakfast — we’ve been hitting up iHop for the last nine years, but we convinced the girls to give Big Bad Breakfast a shot. You guys, brandy soaked french toast is where it’s at!
We have bought our tree here at the tent every single year that we’ve been married except one (which was a total disaster and you can hear about here, if you need a good laugh in your life) and we love giving them our business. They travel and stay in a camper the entire month before Christmas, selling Frasier Firs from North Carolina. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can take a look at our pretty tree in Wednesday’s post!
Saturday was the Iron Bowl (ROLL TIDE!) and we spent the day at Josh’s parents with all of our best football friends. The game definitely went our way and we are kind of excited that we get to play for the SEC Championship game tomorrow. There is a little road trip in our future, so I hope I have some fun photos to share of that next week.
Can we talk about these kids?! Sophie was super excited that she could finally fit into this cheerleader uniform and she was proud to sport it all day long. I hate that I don’t have a photo of every kid, because there were a TON. They rode four-wheelers, played spy and cheered on the Tide all day long.
Nana had asked if we could take a big family photo while everyone was in one place and dressed in her favorite color. This is how Ella felt about the whole thing…
It took us awhile to get everyone cooperating, but the photos turned out super cute!
On Sunday, after church, we went back to Nana’s for one last round of Thanksgiving. The amount of food we ate over the span of four days is embarrassing. I didn’t take nearly enough pictures that day because we ate a lot, slept all afternoon and then decorated the tree while the kids played outside. After a crazy holiday week, we all needed a low key day filled with family and food.
We packed SO MANY things into our four days together and I was so sad to see it go. I am seriously excited that I’ll be off work for eleven days with my people again later this month.
