Thanksgiving 2018 {Austin, TX}

It's so hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone! Since we knew we would be making a trip to GA in December, we decided to stay close to home for Thanksgiving. And we followed suit with our recent Thanksgivings and made a family adventure out of the holiday. Austin is only about a 90 minute drive from San Antonio, so we spent a few days exploring the city over the girls' Thanksgiving break from school.

On the way to Austin, there is a snake farm/small zoo that we have passed a million times and never stopped at..so this was our day! It was a fun little spot, but we had to wake up this sleepy head before we went in! He snuck in a little car nap each day of our trip, and I can never resist a sleeping baby picture...so you might see another picture or two just like this one later in the post! ;)

We stopped for an early dinner at Chick-fil-a and then got settled into our hotel room. While we lived in Las Vegas, we took so many small trips to Disneyland and nearby national parks that the kids are traveling pros now. They each packed their own little entertainment bags and immediately settled themselves into their spots in the hotel. Hadley picked out her spot first and had all of her little treasures "just so" about 2 minutes after we checked in! ;)

We started our first morning in Austin with donuts and a quick trip to the top of Mount Bonnell for a great view! We couldn't have asked for better weather for our trip!

{Clearly Brady wasn't impressed with the view, ha!} 

Our next stop after Mount Bonnell was The Thinkery, which is Austin's children's museum downtown. While we were at the museum, we randomly ran into a friend from high school and his family that apparently now live in Austin. The world is such a crazy small place sometimes! We have Brady to thank for us seeing this old friend. Brady was throwing a fit in the museum, and so I'm sure everyone was looking to see who had the crazy yelling kid..and then someone realized, hey I know the people with the crazy kid! ;)  The last time we went to Disneyland we ran into a friend from high school, and then this encounter at the children's museum...it's so surreal to see someone we know so far away from home!

Brady is always a big fan of the free ice cream at Jason's Deli! :)

After lunch and a quick car nap, it was time for Dinosaur Park! :)

On Thanksgiving Day, we went to see the new Grinch movie, ate our Thanksgiving lunch at Cracker Barrel, and then spent the rest of the day at the park! We all LOVED the new Grinch movie!!! We thought Brady would do okay in the theater, but he blew us away! He wanted to sit in his own seat and was as still as a statue for the entire duration of the movie! I love the pictures of him in the theater!!

Derek and I tried to count back over the years, and we think this was our 4th time eating at Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving Day since we've had kids. In the past, we have always just walked right in and sat down. This time we were quoted a two hour wait, but thankfully it only ended up being an hour! And shockingly, the kids never even complained b/c they were enamored with the gift shop. ;)

We capped off our Thanksgiving Day sitting by the fireplace sipping hot cocoa from the hotel's hot cocoa bar.

Our last day in Austin was spent at the Austin Zoo, we went for an encore visit to the park we went to the day before b/c the girls just loved it so much, and going to see Santa to kick off the Christmas season!

We had such a fun little family get-away! We came home first thing Saturday morning to watch the Dawgs beat Tech and break out our Christmas decorations! We were so thankful for the extra family time we had last week, but it was so good to get back home and back to our routine this week!

An Homage to our Double Jogging Stroller

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that we had donated our double jogging stroller. I wrote in the
post about how I rarely get sentimental when getting rid of things we don't need anymore, but this stroller just got to me for some reason. I went down the rabbit hole of old pictures and came across so many of the stroller throughout the past few years.

 {September 2013}

 

 

 



{April 2014}

The picture below totally got me. It was taken days before we got in the car to make our journey to San Antonio and left Biloxi behind in our rear view mirror. We put everything we owned--except for the essentials that we kept with us--in the moving truck and little did we know, we wouldn't see our household goods for well over a month before it was all said and done. One of the essentials that we kept with us was this stroller. As the moving trucks were loading up our house in Biloxi, I was able to sneak away for walks with the girls. And as we were not so patiently waiting for our things to be delivered to us on the other side of the move in San Antonio, we used this stroller every morning for walks to our new neighborhood playground.

{June 2014, last walk around the back bay in Biloxi before we moved}

{June 2014, first trip to San Antonio Zoo}

{November 2016, first trip to Disneyland}



{Disneyland, November 2016}

 {April 2017}

 {June 2017, our beloved "bunny trail" in Las Vegas}

 {January 2018, Disneyland}

{February 2018, Daddy Duty while Mommy was in GA visiting Auntie Em & Baby Logan}

{May 2018, Disneyland}



{May 2018, Disneyland}

It's obviously just a stroller, but it served us so well over the years and held countless memories for our family! 

Our 2nd Visitor!

We had our second visitor come see us at our new house this past weekend! We had so much fun spending the weekend with Derek's mom, aka BooBoo!

Highlights of the weekend were showing BooBoo the pool excavation that was underway, BooBoo bringing Derek's old Cub Scout uniform, a trip to Kiddie Park, BooBoo bringing an old toy excavator (very timely considering what was currently happening in our backyard!) of Derek's for Brady that he quickly became very attached to, BooBoo's annual holiday crafts, watching the Dawgs clench the SEC East, and lots of quality together time!

Thanks again for coming, BooBoo! We love you!