Minnesota Thanksgiving!

We had the most wonderful thanksgiving this year, full of time with both of our families and friends! I'll do a little recap of each day we were in Minnesota.

*Disclaimer - this post is kind of long so if you don't feel like reading it all you can get a good idea of what we did from the pictures.

Thursday:

Thanksgiving Day! We spent the night at my Aunt's house in Stillwater and had our first Thanksgiving meal with all of my immediate family and extended family on my mom's side. It was pure craziness with so many young kids running around and screaming, but we loved every min of it. Of course we got a game of hand-and-foot in as well. Brett's family came up for Thanksgiving day as well so we headed over to Dan and Heidi's (brett's sister and brother-in-law) for round two of our Thanksgiving meal. Both meals were excellent! We got to meet the newest little additions to the Shearer family...our new neices.

Shearer Family
Dan, Heidi, Evelyn, and Anna

Grandpa Huber and Anna sleeping



So precious!

Friday:

We stayed in Stillwater again and woke up to my Mom, neices and nephews, and Grandma still at my Aunt's. It was a pleasant surprise to be able to just relax and chat with all of them a bit more. We headed over to Bloomington to visit Dan and Heidi and the girls again but first we had to make a stop at REI. We didn't buy a single thing but we sure did dream a lot of all the things we would like to have...we love that store! After we were done dreaming at REI we headed over to the Shearer's and had the most relaxing time there just chatting and holding Anna and Evelyn. We loved every min of it.

Uncle Brett getting some practice before our little guy comes!

Whenever Brett and I go back to Minnesota it always seems so...not relaxing. There are so many people that we want to be able to see while we are home in Minnesota but time usually does not permit to see everyone and it requires a lot more driving on our part so this time we decided why not get everyone together for an evening...great idea right? It was so wonderful! We met everyone at Broadway Pizza and then some of us went to the Macy's Christmas Display.

The girls at Broadway Pizza (minus Heidi and the babies)
Naomi, Becky, Me, Julie, Sondra, Courtney

The guys (minus Dan)
Luke, Brett, EJ



The five of us at the Macy's Christmas Display
Brett, Me, Julie, Becky, and EJ

Saturday:

We drove up to Cambridge after the Macy's display and stayed with my Mom. Brett is not much of a sleeping in kind of a guy and I think it has rubbed off onto me because neither of us tend to sleep in. Although we had our first exception on Sat. morning...we woke up to my Mom cooking waffles, eggs, and bacon. I thought...it can't be past 7:00am why is she making all that noise already. We deicided to get up only to find out it was 10:15am...the latest we have ever slept together and it was wonderful and so refreshing. My Mom is fixing up the downstairs where she rents out the house and so Brett went down there to help fix things up while Mom and I looked through the many, many, many boxes of Christmas decorations that Mom has. My Mom is one of those decorate in a new theme each year for Christmas kind of a person so needless to say she has accumulated a lot of Christmas decorations over the years. The best part...we went through every box and she let me take whatever I wanted to start our own Christmas collection. It was wonderful and such a blessing to be given so much stuff and not having to buy it all or wait years and years to accumulate decorations.

Some of my favorite decorations...some are ones I remember as a kid
and others I just thought were fun. Brett's favorite it the one on the
far right that is Santa made out of a shotgun shell.

Sat. evening we went to the Lundgren's house to visit Luke and Naomi Perman. Naomi, Bear, and I got in a sweet game of hand-and-foot! We visited with them for awhile before heading over to Dan and Heidi's for the evening. I was telling Brett as we were driving over to their house that it is so nice being able to see Heidi and Dan so much this time and how I wished we all lived closer to each other. We had another relaxing evening with them and the babies.

Sunday:

We saw our first bit of snow of the year! Beautiful! We got up in the morning and had breakfast with Dan and Heidi, hung out for a bit, got a little last min. baby holding time, said our goodbyes until Christmas and then made our way to St.Paul to go to the Muellers church (Bob Mueller married Brett and I and both him and Lisa have made a huge impact on my life - they are like my second set of parents!) It was great to be able to see them since haven't seen them since the wedding. We went out to eat with them after church, had a great meal and great fellowship and then started to make our way back home to Peoria. We had some pretty bad roads on the way home but by the grace of God we made it home safely. I was so proud of Brett...he is such a great driver and I feel so safe with him even when there are bad roads. In the past few years I have really started to hate driving when the roads are bad...I get a really uneasy feeling but thanks to my wonderful husband he drove the whole 7 hours from the cities to Peoria so I wouldn't have to drive in the bad weather...what a man!

Sorry the post was so long but I wanted to get everything in from our trip back to Minnesota...every part of it was just so wonderful that I didn't want to leave anything out. Thanks for sticking it out and reading it all!